The commission was an opportunity for the government to show evidence of "activities directed toward or in support of threats or acts of serious violence" which, as you (almost) mention, is an absolute requirement for invoking the EA for a Public Order Emergency.
It never did. There was none.
As you say, this will change no minds. Some people believe the government should follow the law, even if that prevents it from accomplishing a goal that they like.
Some think the government should be allowed to do whatever it decides is for the greater good.
And some, many, claim to think the government should follow the law, but are trying to reconcile that with the fact that they just didn't like the Freedom Convoy, and therefore support the government anyway.
For a cop to go into hospital is a "low bar", in itself.
But that hypothetical hurt wasn't a traffic accident, or random street crime: it was a direct challenge to the government. Message received: if you come challenge lawful authority, and bring enough trucks, the cops and politicians both will just take it and take it, until somebody gets hurt, that's how they'll fold if intimidated.
Let's be clear: the protest wasn't just speech, it was intimidation. Like that big guy who stomped up to Freeland the other week, alarming everybody. All large, strong, powerful people and corporate bodies want "Intimidation" to be sanctified as "free speech". It's those who are being intimidated that want to "censor" it. Not the speech, the intimidation.
I was mainly on the fence with one side knowing the lead up to enacting the act couldn't be above board and the other side not caring because the consequences were clearly negligible; nobody took over parliament, the protest was cleared without incident, and I'm not seeing anyone asking for reparations because their bank accounts got frozen. Clearly people are more butt hurt either in bleeding heart principle or in protest that they couldn't be the ones taking over.
That being said, Jesse on the Canadaland podcast brought up a good point that jives with my thinking; in the lead up to and during the protest, there were police officers visibly supporting this protest. Regardless of the reports the cabinet must have been receiving from the upper branches of the Police force in private, in public the law was losing face in front of the protest and the OPP did not come through with it's obligations. It must have looked like a more forceful approach would end up being necessary if that trend didn't change.
Yes André…Jesse from Canadaland points out clearly that the various police forces in Ottawa gave passive and sometimes active assistance to the convoy. They were not there to protect but to shelter and aid. Why has that not been brought up.
Well it certainly has not been ignored here in Ottawa. The big loser of course is confidence that we have in OPS / OPP. Not just the rank and file, many of whom as you point out openly supported the occupation but the leadership whose many deficiencies the inquiry correctly pointed out. Political leadership starting with Ford did not get enough attention as well. While Ottawa is long used to be on the wrong end of Hwy 416 the utter refusal for Queen's Park and by extension the OPP to get involved shows how broken the Municiple/provincial/federal relationship has become. Of course that wasn't the mandate for this inquiry which was strictly limited to whether the EA was necessary, but it should have been.
Canadians should be pleased to have their civil rights suspended because the Freedom Convoy was intimidating? Or humiliating?
Let’s think about that for a moment. There are many ways to intimidate through protest. Crossing picket lines is deemed to be morally unacceptable, but also carries risk of harm to person or property. That’s thinly veiled intimidation.
One of the most important pieces of infrastructure in Canada is the national railway system, a vast and unsecured corridor moving billions of dollars of goods and commodities. Protesters are seeing advantages to block rail lines for political leverage. Why? Because forcefully removing blockade protesters could backfire, with copycat actions setting up two miles, a hundred or thousand of miles away. There’s one Ambassador Bridge, but a million ways to grind rail traffic to a halt. That’s intimidation.
And then there is the real deal at the Coastal Gas Link facility. Heavy machinery hijacked, untold amounts of damage to buildings, machinery and infrastructure and people lives threatened. That’s intimidation.
The Convoy wasn’t intimidating, it was humiliating. The Prime Minister carved off a group of Canadians into a subset of less than desirables, demonizing them at every opportunity. Many Canadians support these tactics which is sad, but the political class got out manoeuvred and exposed for a serious lack of teamwork, leadership and general bungling. Outsmarted by trucks, beards and ambition. The humiliation of it all...
Agreed. Convoyers assaulted innocent people who were wearing masks, they threatened people who asked them to obey the law and wear a mask in stores, they tortured people day and night with noise and diesel fumes and endangered them with open fires and gas cans all over.
They committed criminal acts, not just "humiliation". And some of them did have weapons in Ottawa, others had their children in cold noisy trucks. I wonder how many have damaged hearing? Did "Metis grandmother" Lich have her own grandchildren there? No, they were safe at home and she was in a nice warm hotel room where the honking was less noticeable, like the rest of those callous leaders who cried for their own problems but never expressed any remorse for the harm they did to so many other people.
As for Coutts, that gun collection was not just a few guns, it included automatic weapons and rifles, ammo, body armour, and walkie-talkies, like they were prepared for a specific kind of military operation, such as killing cops. Those trials should be eye-opening.
There were all sorts of people in that convoy, not all of them we're trying to overthrow the government. The media did neglect to interview more people like Tyler Shellback in that video.
But there were bad actors, I was surprised to hear that they started to organize an enforcement group, swearing allegiance to Canada Unity to boot.
It was a mob. Of course, not everyone was down with overthrowing the government, but most were perfectly happy to stand back a couple of feet to watch. Hundreds of people were interviewed with hours and hours of “FREEDUM”, “MY BODY MY CHOICE” (so funny to hear a bearded guy say that — it’s so “woke”), “MY RIGHTS" and other buzz words, salted with conspiracy theories were videoed. Tyler Shellback could form complete sentences which is why he became a minor celebrity. Too many could only spout their ridiculous shorthand and yell over top of each other.
So I agree, most didn’t want to overthrow the government, that’s where their cheques come from after all.
You have simply no evidence for any of the assertions about Ottawa except for the noise - and that some people brought their children. (And don't cry crocodile tears about the kids - it was the government who suggested kidnapping the children for leverage against the parents)
No evidence was ever introduced during the inquiry. It was all media and government lies.
There is a mountain of evidence for anyone who has the courage to look. PEOC has the statements of many witnesses testifying under oath, recorded with transcripts, and thousands of documents filed AS EVIDENCE.
And remember many of the people at POEC lived there and knew what really happened, not the lies the convoyers tell each other and read on hate propaganda sites.
Like I said, noisy horns, no threats, no assaults, no charges, no poec witness testified to having personally been assaulted or seen an assault - all third hand claims.
The 500 charges were all laid after the EA was invoked, as part of the effort to harass peaceful protesters for illegal parking.
Don’t let Belton and Lich hear you giving all the credit to the beards.
CGL has diddly to do with the convoy. Why do you lot (fringe minority) always conflate your silly arguments?
I do think it’s past time you guys got over your ouchy. Remember the childhood chant, “sticks and stones will break your bones...”? JT called you names that you cannot clearly remember (but someone said so) so you parked your trucks with “F*ck Trudeau” flags and more all over, made people's lives hell, then demanded over and over that he be tried for treason, hung, forced to quit, forced to resign (along with the rest of gov.), or whatever excitable reason of the moment. And then insisting it was all a big loving, hugging, kumbaya, Covid-19 party for three weeks.
You lot are making me crazy. I’m not a Liberal but I may have to become one.
The govt never had "lawful authority" for the travel mandate. If they thought they could have won in the Supreme Court, they would have let the case go ahead rather than getting it thrown out for mootness.
But that doesn't matter - many Canadians feel that challenging authority is the ultimate crime, whether that authority is lawful or not.
I didn’t see anything in the Prime Minister’s testimony today that would change my mind. That’s because my starting point goes back to the last time that our civil rights were suspended in peacetime.
In the run up to the FLQ Crisis BOMBS were set off and organized thugs not only plotted nefarious acts but carried them out. People were KIDNAPPED, including a British diplomat. One of the kidnappings went bad and Pierre Laporte showed up DEAD in the trunk of a car.
Even with this chain of horrors the NDP voted against the invoking of the War Measures Act. This harkens back to a time when people stood up to politicians who played fast and loose with rights and freedoms. Today standing up against a Government with a tyrannical streak reveals just how cynical and ruthless the political class is.
I bring this little history lesson up because of the sad, sad reality watching Trudeau today. Not an ounce of contrition or regret for freezing bank accounts and other collateral damage to innocent third parties. Just the serenity of being right, every time.
Politicians of all political stripes deserve respect and the ability to do their work in safety. Respect is easily earned by respectful treatment of others and on this front Justin Trudeau gets a C-. Let’s remember that all this trouble started with the weaponization of vaccines in the 2021 election campaign.
If our Liberal Government spent less time demonizing and dividing Canadians and put that effort into governing maybe the temperature and open hostility would drop?
When the members of the FLQ were interviewed in subsequent years, they say that the bombings and kidnappings and the murder of Pierre Laporte was never part of the original plan, but certain extremist members hijacked the narrative and acted of their own accord. Favoring unity, they got dragged into terrorism and things had the time to escalate because they remained unchallenged by authorities.
This is why protests are usually tolerated in very limited scope then quickly disbanded by the police force. Seeing law enforcement join the protest and let them occupy a civic space unchecked and unchallenged is unheard of. Not since the days of the FLQ. Furthermore, the FLQ's demands were reasonable, they didn't ask for the head of the PM and the dissolution of Parliament in order to install an unelected group of individuals.
The convoy's only demand was that Canadians should not be forced, by denial of rights common to all people, to undergo a medical treatment they didn't want.
The ease, simplicity, and righteousness of this demand is exactly why the government refused to negotiate.
One of the good things about the commission is the way it revealed that many people (cops, one bank president, head of Stelco, Jason Kenney) knew this perfectly well.
Hogwash, it was not their only demand. The leaders were all at a press conference nodding like bobbleheads when Marazzo offered to replace the entire elected Liberal government with his unelected self as part of a junta ruling Canada with whichever opposition parties would go along with this sedition.
The truth is they were a mass of inchoate rage and ignorant egomaniacs who could never hold to a common aim for any length of time.
Nonsense. There were well over 500 charges laid and would have been more if the OPS had responded to every complaint. There is still a steady stream of convoyers going through the court system.
Those drunken "joyous" numskulls should have stayed home.
You were free to make a choice. You weren't forced. You paid the consequences. You weren't and aren't supported by the vast majority of Canadians. Period. Our death rates were lower than most because of us, not because of you. I get that it might not have been easy for you, but it wasn't easy for the rest of us, who made different choices, either. And look, I'm still alive, never had covid and, as a snow bird, I've lived and travelled and enjoyed my life throughout the past two years and even continued to love and support my anti-vax daughter. And now, with the mandates cancelled, are you happy?
Punishing and harming people who make a certain choice IS forcing them.
Many people had to give in. I was lucky that my pre-existing life circumstances made it easy for me to refuse.
If you still think jabs stop transmission, or that healthy people under 60 (ie, those affected by school or employment mandates) are at serious risk from covid, or that jabs benefit people who have already had covid, or that the jabs are risk free for young men, there is no point in me explaining the facts to you.
For your own sake, I wish you would get vaccinated. Do you know that unvaccinated people are 5 times more likely to end up in hospital than vaccinated? Have you been hearing the adverse affects of multiple infections? My cousin in Alberta just died unexpectedly. Much younger than me. Wonder why? Aargh!
The MOU was unrealistic as something that could be put into practice, but is perfectly legal as it doesn't suggest violence.
There is nothing wrong with proposing a peaceful replacement of our constitutional system.
But really they only wrote the MOU because they felt that there was no way Parliament would listen to them and lift the mandates. That was all they actually wanted.
Even more sad than Trudeau's cynicism is that of the journalists. I admire Wells' intelligence, and usually admire his sarcastic distancing, but sometimes it's depressing.
Yes. Exactly what he should have done! Do we want our government to “negotiate” policy with every group of nut bars that come to town? Appearing decisive to restore order was absolutely critical to the global investment community.
Why not? Do you think the gov should negotiate with any or everyone with a bone to pick? Of course, they must be selective. Wrt the occupation/convoy, who would the feds speak to? Whichever ones were sitting in their trucks in the front row noshing on doughnuts that PP delivered? Maybe they could have brought hot cocoa too. Maybe they could have negotiated with everyone with a F*CK TRUDEAU flag. They all had a beef. Maybe the “leaders” could have talked to JT, but does anyone yet have a definitive list of those leaders available to chit-chat? And what solutions specifically would have been acceptable to these “leaders”? And then what would have happened?
I have a little daydream I run through my mind now and then: JT invites the Freedom Corp (as they are now known) to talk. They are escorted into a large and impressive room (think Putin’s long table) with 30ft high ceilings, gilt and chandeliers all over and with columns and archways soaring above the pristine gleaming expanse of wood floors. Mounties in red serge dot the entrances/exits. At one end of the long long table are chairs that look deceptively fragile, carved and gilded and unpadded. The unkempt occupiers, dressed for -20°c are sweating and feeling somewhat unsure of what is happening. They are required to don masks (house rules) and sanitize their hands upon entry. (They are also frisked.) They sit down, gingerly, carefully. Then one of them opens their mouth and the rest chime in too, talking over one another. Nothing new has been added to the exercise and the Freedom Corp (silly name) does not get their MOU accepted nor do the US mandates fall, so why would they expect the Feds to bobble their heads and make the Canadian mandates go poof? Many more Canadians accepted the mandates and restrictions because it was a bloody pandemic, so WTH did these silly buggers think would happen?
No one on the convoy side or on the policing side had their acts together or pulled their thumbs out long enough to figure out how it would all end. The cops didn’t come up with a useful plan in 3 weeks.
On top of all the ridiculousness of it, we hear about the joy and love and hugs people were sharing. No one mentions the occupiers who left because they were sick. And while we learned that the guys trying to set that apartment building on fire were not part of the convoy but that doesn’t change the fact that the convoy gave the arsonists cover possibly unintentionally but still cover.
The EA was the only solution left as more than 3 weeks' worth of other levels of gov and the police couldn’t get it sorted.
Those that keep trying to damn the EA with a selection of short snappy one-liners only show their own ignorance of how things work They don’t want to listen to the science of the medical community (they have alternate science) nor do they want to listen to a duly elected government (they can vote in next election, hell, they can run). I have no doubt that Justice Paul Rouleau’s report will be one more thing to ignore when the people who should read it won’t but they will quote bits anyway.
Let’s be clear. The government made the right decision to invoke the Act. We needed to show to the world that we had control of our borders or face enormous damage to our economy. The key provinces were weak and for the most part driven by partisan political considerations. Doug Ford deserves the most opprobrium. His Province was the most vitally affected and his government was in hiding. It is still in hiding!
That said let’s concede that the the government probably went beyond the words of the statute. And it almost immediately rescinded the authority. What do we want our leaders to do when they encounter a critical issue that the legislation does not address. Wring their hands and do nothing?
The takeaway is that we need more nuance in defining where action is appropriate.
Let's be clearer: The leader of the country was silent for the first two weeks of the protest. 'Hiding' to use your word. When he finally came out it was to ignore the law in order to appear decisive.
Don't be like that. It's not that he deliberately ignored the law, he negligently ignored the fine print of the law. I don't know of a single politician that can successfully be indecisive.
Again and again, the 14 day quarantine for returning residents was a Canadian decision. The ban from planes, trains, and EI was a Canadian decision. The billion dollar bribe to provinces to establish vax passports was a Canadian decision.
Millions were not allowed to fly domestically or internationally. Millions weren’t allowed on a taxpayer funded train. People were facing health taxes for being unvaccinated in Quebec. Want to buy food in New Brunswick? Not at a grocery store . ( it never happened but it was “floated”) The entire Covid “thing” was snowballing and had become quite frightening. There were more than one Gas The Unvaccinated signs. These brave people, the truckers, saved us all from going to a very dark place. I for one, will be forever grateful.
Most truckers were vaccinated. They are the brave people I am grateful for. Roughly 10% who were not vaxxed were not all crossing the border. Millions more were able to fly because they were vaxxed. Most of the mandates were provincial, some were municipal, and the Feds couldn’t change those for you anyway.
There is an ongoing pandemic. The truckers had over 3 months to squawk about the cross-border issue. They couldn’t be bothered to start whining until the last minute. How many of those in Ottawa, Windsor, Coutts and other blockades happily collected CERB and other handouts from the feds just months earlier?
I have seen a few signs bashing the unvaxxed. A very few. But talking of going to a very dark place, I have seen yellow Stars of David on too many grubby coats of men carrying flags and signs that are insults to all Canadians.
What was floated and never happened? So who cares?
Mobs are to be feared. You don’t know what might set them off. Covid-19 is not a “thing”. Everyone is still living with it. You can pretend it is over or no longer a “thing”. Or you continue to be angry at things that didn’t happen.
Put on your sequins and get ready to kick high, Paul, coz I found my opinion changed after watching Trudeau’s performance today. I still think there was some supercilious hairsplitting going on around the CSIS Act, but I believed he had asked his officials the right questions and I became convinced he had made a tough decision on the matter. There’s vivid tread marks on the cops he tossed under the bus, ‘natch, but I surprisingly found him to be what we used to call in the IC, “a good brief”. Now , if he could just wipe that shit-eating grin off his chops, I could vote for him again!
The PM was definitely well prepared. Remember though there was lots of emphasis on being proactive to prevent possible violence, and not reactive to a violent situation.
What did not sit well with me was the reference the PM made, as did Jody Thomas, that the protesters brought their children along as shields. I found the accusation offensive. Some families discuss current events, and no doubt the children were as eager to come along as the parents were to not leave them behind as they set out to the nation's capital.
I think there was a report of a child having frostbite, because the kids were in the cold trucks being human shields and probably having their hearing damaged by the loud continuous noise as well as probably catching covid from the idiots around them, while the convoy leaders were in their warm comfortable hotel rooms.
I am going to give the parents the benefit of the doubt, and assume they were close at hand and made certain the child was not in danger. Now someone could have approached the child, unscrewed the top, and thrown a match at them, but such fears may be misplaced. Your life experience may have been a bit more sheltered than the child you see. Some parents encourage their children to pitch in and assist, and the children appreciate being included. This is particularly true for farm and rural children as opposed to the experience of us city dwellers who tend to be helicopter parents. A bit of the story of the city mouse and the country mouse.
As for the frostbite accusation. You state, "you think there was a report". Thinking does not make it so.
PMJT and Jody Thomas in their testimony accused the parents of using the children as "human shields". I feel that is inappropriate and your description of them as "idiots" is likewise inappropriate.
I grew up on a farm and my parents were careful to keep us kids safe. Any trouble we got into was when they were not around. They would never have strapped a gas can to any small child because they were good parents and decent people, not selfish fools too lazy to think about their children's welfare.
"Human shields" is exactly what these children were, and I feel sorry for them having such bad parents.
I thought Trudeau was going to come in unable to suppress his confidence after the groundwork laid by all lackeys --instead, he appeared to me to be making it up as he went along. He looked guilty and much of what he said was complete fluff. In other words, I believed little of what he claimed went on behind the scenes.
"I can’t help noticing that the opposition leader hasn’t been his usual ebullient self this month." It's pretty clear that every time a minister or the PM opens their mouth on this topic you can be pretty sure they will create a cow patty and immediately step into it. Why would you want to get involved? Rather just sit back with your popcorn and watch the show. As they say - "You can't make this stuff up". Aside from that the opposition leader unafraid to go out and meet with Canadians in their backyard to listen to their concerns and solutions as he was in BC this week.
Firefighters have a plan of putting out a fire from the get go. However the actual plan of how to do this is developed when the scene of the fire has been observed and appraised.
The Fed's, standing back and watching the Laurel and Hardy show called the OPS gong show of how to not handle a protest, had to have felt like this is not getting any better.
Bringing the army into one's own Capitol to handle this situation would only have amped up the "Banana Republic" rhetoric.
Listening to and reading reports of this inquiry has only further proved to myself that the decision to use the Emergencies Act was the correct one.
Remember, unlike the decision makers at that snapshot in time, we now have the benefit of hindsight.
Let's everyone just totally ignore that Trudeau could have engaged the protestor leaders in some way, and not insulted them with disdain, and that that would have made all the difference. A difference Trudeau did not want, because he WANTED to invoke the Emergencies Act.
If they really wanted to have a grownup conversation with our Prime Minister, they should not have been waving F*ck Trudeau flags all over the place, plus all the various racist flags, posters and buttons displayed that first weekend, such as yellow Star of David buttons which were for sale and which some of the Alberta idiots had been wearing in protests for a year or more.
Just like when that thug saw Chrystia Freeland in the hotel lobby. He didn't ask her a question or tell her what he did not like about federal policies, he just yelled foul insults. What an embarrassment.
It was a guy venting himself - and, gee, he used the f-word. He did not encroach upon her physically and did not accelerate his verbal attack. Compare to when "Freeland blocked by anti-pipeline protestors in Halifax" (YouTube description), in which she was closely surrounded and hemmed in physically by many protestors. Not one cry of outrage from the same mainstream media who freaked out about the f-word venter.
That thug and his female companions knew Freeland was likely in that hotel, so they had time to think up something halfways intelligent to say, but thug with his ragged shirt and his pants falling down could not think of anything but misogynistic abuse?
presumably not (i don't do tiktok) -- but was she physically constrained, leaned right into by a bunch surrounding her, as the pipeline protestors did? Yet no police called, no outrage... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSn9uyLe2BM
--while you pretend you're not a fascist enabler? If you can't see that preemptive actions are not supportable, certainly not in invoking what was effectively Martial Law, then you are much farther-right than the so-called "far-right."
Still the question of why dialog / diplomacy was not not tried was not asked. Being afraid of people who disagree with you is a good enough reason. The question of why insult and denigrate people who disagree with you was not asked. Surely we must expect our government leaders to set their bar a lot higher than was the seen here.
I await Mr. Rouleau's conclusion and assume it will be the right one. I don't think I break any new ground when I say the only possible resolution was that these nutjobs were going to be removed by force, it's just a technicality whether it was authorized by the EA or something else. Even if trying to cut off the funds for paid hooligans to drive them away turns out to be done wrongly, there is no world in which it's better than having the police try to forcibly remove people, some of whom were armed.
--some of the people removed were armed? That seems to suggest some protestors right in the ranks "holding the line" had guns and were, perhaps, prepared to use them. Is that accurate?
I would like to commend Justice Rouleau and his team on this remarkable pulling of all threads. The report's advice will be of historic importance to our democracy.
Assuming that Trudeau is anything but a glib, superficial fraud who rode to power strictly on his famous last name and nice hair, doesn't make for successful journalism, in my view. Justin Trudeau wanted to invoke the Emergencies Act because his father did, that's the bottom line--being able to inflict it on a demographic that didn't vote for him and that he already has a habit of targeting just made it that much more satisfying for a proto-fascist who, by now, is so morally hollow he has no choice but to swallow his own swill and smile doing it.
You are right Paul, this commission couldn't possibly change my mind; mostly because everything we are witnessing now it revisionistic history. We'll never truly know what the actual plans or intentions were of everyone involved in that circus. I doubt even the witnesses are sure of anything at this point. I've crassly said that I didn't expect the government to hold itself accountable, but you've been a great help reading between the lines of testimony and it's your commentary that keeps me interested in the inquiry.
What I would like to see, not only from the Rouleau team but also from the witnesses and the spectators, is a focus on the actions and the results and make that the target for evaluation. Clearly there are lines of communications that were underused or neglected. Clearly the government had a legal tool at their disposal and nobody was properly trained on how to use it. These are areas with a real and measurable need for improvement. This is what this inquiry should exist for. Instead everywhere I turn everybody is waiting with bated breath for a 'gotch'ya' moment to nail anyone on the other side of the argument to the cross.
The damages, figurative or metaphorical, do not warrant such a negative reaction. In fact the overarching argument should be a lot simpler than the imagined Orwellian plot of government overreach. Regardless of the existence of a plan by the Police services at any stage of the protest and regardless of their intention to put this plan into action and regardless of the need of Emergencies act to put that plan into action, once the situation pushed the cabinet into considering invoking the Emergencies Act they also have to consider the harm in not invoking it. It's easy to criticize the decision now and say it was not needed, but if it had turned out that it was needed, how would you feel about the cabinet's inaction?
I think we need to be thankful that this is the most oppressive legal tool the government has their disposal and the worst that came out of using it is a lot of bad optics, nationally and internationally. Paul mentioned in this article that the PM "much preferred to explain his decision to use the act, rather than the decision to forego it." That's a missed opportunity. If everybody in the cabinet would have been on the same page, it would have been a good strategy to feed this inquiry the idea that the real problem was not invoking the act, but how it was invoked; more specifically the lack of due process that would prevent future governments from winging it like this one did in February.
Except that repealing the vaccination mandate for international truckers would have given not benefit unless the US also repealed its vaccination mandate
The commission was an opportunity for the government to show evidence of "activities directed toward or in support of threats or acts of serious violence" which, as you (almost) mention, is an absolute requirement for invoking the EA for a Public Order Emergency.
It never did. There was none.
As you say, this will change no minds. Some people believe the government should follow the law, even if that prevents it from accomplishing a goal that they like.
Some think the government should be allowed to do whatever it decides is for the greater good.
And some, many, claim to think the government should follow the law, but are trying to reconcile that with the fact that they just didn't like the Freedom Convoy, and therefore support the government anyway.
For a cop to go into hospital is a "low bar", in itself.
But that hypothetical hurt wasn't a traffic accident, or random street crime: it was a direct challenge to the government. Message received: if you come challenge lawful authority, and bring enough trucks, the cops and politicians both will just take it and take it, until somebody gets hurt, that's how they'll fold if intimidated.
Let's be clear: the protest wasn't just speech, it was intimidation. Like that big guy who stomped up to Freeland the other week, alarming everybody. All large, strong, powerful people and corporate bodies want "Intimidation" to be sanctified as "free speech". It's those who are being intimidated that want to "censor" it. Not the speech, the intimidation.
I was mainly on the fence with one side knowing the lead up to enacting the act couldn't be above board and the other side not caring because the consequences were clearly negligible; nobody took over parliament, the protest was cleared without incident, and I'm not seeing anyone asking for reparations because their bank accounts got frozen. Clearly people are more butt hurt either in bleeding heart principle or in protest that they couldn't be the ones taking over.
That being said, Jesse on the Canadaland podcast brought up a good point that jives with my thinking; in the lead up to and during the protest, there were police officers visibly supporting this protest. Regardless of the reports the cabinet must have been receiving from the upper branches of the Police force in private, in public the law was losing face in front of the protest and the OPP did not come through with it's obligations. It must have looked like a more forceful approach would end up being necessary if that trend didn't change.
Yes André…Jesse from Canadaland points out clearly that the various police forces in Ottawa gave passive and sometimes active assistance to the convoy. They were not there to protect but to shelter and aid. Why has that not been brought up.
Well it certainly has not been ignored here in Ottawa. The big loser of course is confidence that we have in OPS / OPP. Not just the rank and file, many of whom as you point out openly supported the occupation but the leadership whose many deficiencies the inquiry correctly pointed out. Political leadership starting with Ford did not get enough attention as well. While Ottawa is long used to be on the wrong end of Hwy 416 the utter refusal for Queen's Park and by extension the OPP to get involved shows how broken the Municiple/provincial/federal relationship has become. Of course that wasn't the mandate for this inquiry which was strictly limited to whether the EA was necessary, but it should have been.
Canadians should be pleased to have their civil rights suspended because the Freedom Convoy was intimidating? Or humiliating?
Let’s think about that for a moment. There are many ways to intimidate through protest. Crossing picket lines is deemed to be morally unacceptable, but also carries risk of harm to person or property. That’s thinly veiled intimidation.
One of the most important pieces of infrastructure in Canada is the national railway system, a vast and unsecured corridor moving billions of dollars of goods and commodities. Protesters are seeing advantages to block rail lines for political leverage. Why? Because forcefully removing blockade protesters could backfire, with copycat actions setting up two miles, a hundred or thousand of miles away. There’s one Ambassador Bridge, but a million ways to grind rail traffic to a halt. That’s intimidation.
And then there is the real deal at the Coastal Gas Link facility. Heavy machinery hijacked, untold amounts of damage to buildings, machinery and infrastructure and people lives threatened. That’s intimidation.
The Convoy wasn’t intimidating, it was humiliating. The Prime Minister carved off a group of Canadians into a subset of less than desirables, demonizing them at every opportunity. Many Canadians support these tactics which is sad, but the political class got out manoeuvred and exposed for a serious lack of teamwork, leadership and general bungling. Outsmarted by trucks, beards and ambition. The humiliation of it all...
You forgot what really happened already.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jtu6NtErmbQ
Agreed. Convoyers assaulted innocent people who were wearing masks, they threatened people who asked them to obey the law and wear a mask in stores, they tortured people day and night with noise and diesel fumes and endangered them with open fires and gas cans all over.
They committed criminal acts, not just "humiliation". And some of them did have weapons in Ottawa, others had their children in cold noisy trucks. I wonder how many have damaged hearing? Did "Metis grandmother" Lich have her own grandchildren there? No, they were safe at home and she was in a nice warm hotel room where the honking was less noticeable, like the rest of those callous leaders who cried for their own problems but never expressed any remorse for the harm they did to so many other people.
As for Coutts, that gun collection was not just a few guns, it included automatic weapons and rifles, ammo, body armour, and walkie-talkies, like they were prepared for a specific kind of military operation, such as killing cops. Those trials should be eye-opening.
There were all sorts of people in that convoy, not all of them we're trying to overthrow the government. The media did neglect to interview more people like Tyler Shellback in that video.
But there were bad actors, I was surprised to hear that they started to organize an enforcement group, swearing allegiance to Canada Unity to boot.
It was a mob. Of course, not everyone was down with overthrowing the government, but most were perfectly happy to stand back a couple of feet to watch. Hundreds of people were interviewed with hours and hours of “FREEDUM”, “MY BODY MY CHOICE” (so funny to hear a bearded guy say that — it’s so “woke”), “MY RIGHTS" and other buzz words, salted with conspiracy theories were videoed. Tyler Shellback could form complete sentences which is why he became a minor celebrity. Too many could only spout their ridiculous shorthand and yell over top of each other.
So I agree, most didn’t want to overthrow the government, that’s where their cheques come from after all.
You have simply no evidence for any of the assertions about Ottawa except for the noise - and that some people brought their children. (And don't cry crocodile tears about the kids - it was the government who suggested kidnapping the children for leverage against the parents)
No evidence was ever introduced during the inquiry. It was all media and government lies.
There is a mountain of evidence for anyone who has the courage to look. PEOC has the statements of many witnesses testifying under oath, recorded with transcripts, and thousands of documents filed AS EVIDENCE.
Start with the very first witnesses here: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/public-hearings/day-1-october-13/
The professional media reported in detail what happened every day.
https://ottawa.ctvnews.ca/policing-bill-for-freedom-convoy-occupation-in-ottawa-tops-55-million-1.6120036
And remember many of the people at POEC lived there and knew what really happened, not the lies the convoyers tell each other and read on hate propaganda sites.
Documents: https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/documents/
A video shown to the commission
https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/exhibit-videos/coa00000135/?t=1669600184
If the link doesn't work type this into the search engine: COA00000135
Like I said, noisy horns, no threats, no assaults, no charges, no poec witness testified to having personally been assaulted or seen an assault - all third hand claims.
The 500 charges were all laid after the EA was invoked, as part of the effort to harass peaceful protesters for illegal parking.
Don’t let Belton and Lich hear you giving all the credit to the beards.
CGL has diddly to do with the convoy. Why do you lot (fringe minority) always conflate your silly arguments?
I do think it’s past time you guys got over your ouchy. Remember the childhood chant, “sticks and stones will break your bones...”? JT called you names that you cannot clearly remember (but someone said so) so you parked your trucks with “F*ck Trudeau” flags and more all over, made people's lives hell, then demanded over and over that he be tried for treason, hung, forced to quit, forced to resign (along with the rest of gov.), or whatever excitable reason of the moment. And then insisting it was all a big loving, hugging, kumbaya, Covid-19 party for three weeks.
You lot are making me crazy. I’m not a Liberal but I may have to become one.
Panic, my friend, PANIC.
The govt never had "lawful authority" for the travel mandate. If they thought they could have won in the Supreme Court, they would have let the case go ahead rather than getting it thrown out for mootness.
But that doesn't matter - many Canadians feel that challenging authority is the ultimate crime, whether that authority is lawful or not.
Mark, it’s obvious you are not a lawyer. You are not much of a criminal either. 😉
I didn’t see anything in the Prime Minister’s testimony today that would change my mind. That’s because my starting point goes back to the last time that our civil rights were suspended in peacetime.
In the run up to the FLQ Crisis BOMBS were set off and organized thugs not only plotted nefarious acts but carried them out. People were KIDNAPPED, including a British diplomat. One of the kidnappings went bad and Pierre Laporte showed up DEAD in the trunk of a car.
Even with this chain of horrors the NDP voted against the invoking of the War Measures Act. This harkens back to a time when people stood up to politicians who played fast and loose with rights and freedoms. Today standing up against a Government with a tyrannical streak reveals just how cynical and ruthless the political class is.
I bring this little history lesson up because of the sad, sad reality watching Trudeau today. Not an ounce of contrition or regret for freezing bank accounts and other collateral damage to innocent third parties. Just the serenity of being right, every time.
Politicians of all political stripes deserve respect and the ability to do their work in safety. Respect is easily earned by respectful treatment of others and on this front Justin Trudeau gets a C-. Let’s remember that all this trouble started with the weaponization of vaccines in the 2021 election campaign.
If our Liberal Government spent less time demonizing and dividing Canadians and put that effort into governing maybe the temperature and open hostility would drop?
When the members of the FLQ were interviewed in subsequent years, they say that the bombings and kidnappings and the murder of Pierre Laporte was never part of the original plan, but certain extremist members hijacked the narrative and acted of their own accord. Favoring unity, they got dragged into terrorism and things had the time to escalate because they remained unchallenged by authorities.
This is why protests are usually tolerated in very limited scope then quickly disbanded by the police force. Seeing law enforcement join the protest and let them occupy a civic space unchecked and unchallenged is unheard of. Not since the days of the FLQ. Furthermore, the FLQ's demands were reasonable, they didn't ask for the head of the PM and the dissolution of Parliament in order to install an unelected group of individuals.
The convoy's only demand was that Canadians should not be forced, by denial of rights common to all people, to undergo a medical treatment they didn't want.
The ease, simplicity, and righteousness of this demand is exactly why the government refused to negotiate.
One of the good things about the commission is the way it revealed that many people (cops, one bank president, head of Stelco, Jason Kenney) knew this perfectly well.
Too bad they were afraid to say so publicly.
Hogwash, it was not their only demand. The leaders were all at a press conference nodding like bobbleheads when Marazzo offered to replace the entire elected Liberal government with his unelected self as part of a junta ruling Canada with whichever opposition parties would go along with this sedition.
The truth is they were a mass of inchoate rage and ignorant egomaniacs who could never hold to a common aim for any length of time.
When I was there, it was unashamedly joyous - the only rage came from the brainwashed Ottawans who believed the government.
Had the government offered to lift the mandates, 99% of the convoyers at least would have gone home happy.
Trudeau couldn't bear the thought of that.
Nonsense. There were well over 500 charges laid and would have been more if the OPS had responded to every complaint. There is still a steady stream of convoyers going through the court system.
Those drunken "joyous" numskulls should have stayed home.
You were free to make a choice. You weren't forced. You paid the consequences. You weren't and aren't supported by the vast majority of Canadians. Period. Our death rates were lower than most because of us, not because of you. I get that it might not have been easy for you, but it wasn't easy for the rest of us, who made different choices, either. And look, I'm still alive, never had covid and, as a snow bird, I've lived and travelled and enjoyed my life throughout the past two years and even continued to love and support my anti-vax daughter. And now, with the mandates cancelled, are you happy?
Punishing and harming people who make a certain choice IS forcing them.
Many people had to give in. I was lucky that my pre-existing life circumstances made it easy for me to refuse.
If you still think jabs stop transmission, or that healthy people under 60 (ie, those affected by school or employment mandates) are at serious risk from covid, or that jabs benefit people who have already had covid, or that the jabs are risk free for young men, there is no point in me explaining the facts to you.
For your own sake, I wish you would get vaccinated. Do you know that unvaccinated people are 5 times more likely to end up in hospital than vaccinated? Have you been hearing the adverse affects of multiple infections? My cousin in Alberta just died unexpectedly. Much younger than me. Wonder why? Aargh!
You forgot about this part already:
https://web.archive.org/web/20220122173201/https://canada-unity.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/01/Combined-MOU-Dec03.pdf
The MOU was unrealistic as something that could be put into practice, but is perfectly legal as it doesn't suggest violence.
There is nothing wrong with proposing a peaceful replacement of our constitutional system.
But really they only wrote the MOU because they felt that there was no way Parliament would listen to them and lift the mandates. That was all they actually wanted.
Yup
Even more sad than Trudeau's cynicism is that of the journalists. I admire Wells' intelligence, and usually admire his sarcastic distancing, but sometimes it's depressing.
Yes. Exactly what he should have done! Do we want our government to “negotiate” policy with every group of nut bars that come to town? Appearing decisive to restore order was absolutely critical to the global investment community.
Perhaps not, however, the govt should not be selective with which group it chooses to negotiate.
Why not? Do you think the gov should negotiate with any or everyone with a bone to pick? Of course, they must be selective. Wrt the occupation/convoy, who would the feds speak to? Whichever ones were sitting in their trucks in the front row noshing on doughnuts that PP delivered? Maybe they could have brought hot cocoa too. Maybe they could have negotiated with everyone with a F*CK TRUDEAU flag. They all had a beef. Maybe the “leaders” could have talked to JT, but does anyone yet have a definitive list of those leaders available to chit-chat? And what solutions specifically would have been acceptable to these “leaders”? And then what would have happened?
I have a little daydream I run through my mind now and then: JT invites the Freedom Corp (as they are now known) to talk. They are escorted into a large and impressive room (think Putin’s long table) with 30ft high ceilings, gilt and chandeliers all over and with columns and archways soaring above the pristine gleaming expanse of wood floors. Mounties in red serge dot the entrances/exits. At one end of the long long table are chairs that look deceptively fragile, carved and gilded and unpadded. The unkempt occupiers, dressed for -20°c are sweating and feeling somewhat unsure of what is happening. They are required to don masks (house rules) and sanitize their hands upon entry. (They are also frisked.) They sit down, gingerly, carefully. Then one of them opens their mouth and the rest chime in too, talking over one another. Nothing new has been added to the exercise and the Freedom Corp (silly name) does not get their MOU accepted nor do the US mandates fall, so why would they expect the Feds to bobble their heads and make the Canadian mandates go poof? Many more Canadians accepted the mandates and restrictions because it was a bloody pandemic, so WTH did these silly buggers think would happen?
No one on the convoy side or on the policing side had their acts together or pulled their thumbs out long enough to figure out how it would all end. The cops didn’t come up with a useful plan in 3 weeks.
On top of all the ridiculousness of it, we hear about the joy and love and hugs people were sharing. No one mentions the occupiers who left because they were sick. And while we learned that the guys trying to set that apartment building on fire were not part of the convoy but that doesn’t change the fact that the convoy gave the arsonists cover possibly unintentionally but still cover.
The EA was the only solution left as more than 3 weeks' worth of other levels of gov and the police couldn’t get it sorted.
Those that keep trying to damn the EA with a selection of short snappy one-liners only show their own ignorance of how things work They don’t want to listen to the science of the medical community (they have alternate science) nor do they want to listen to a duly elected government (they can vote in next election, hell, they can run). I have no doubt that Justice Paul Rouleau’s report will be one more thing to ignore when the people who should read it won’t but they will quote bits anyway.
Silly buggers all.
Seriously ?
Yes, seriously.
Do we want our government to invoke the Emergencies Act against every group of nut bars that come to town?
Let’s be clear. The government made the right decision to invoke the Act. We needed to show to the world that we had control of our borders or face enormous damage to our economy. The key provinces were weak and for the most part driven by partisan political considerations. Doug Ford deserves the most opprobrium. His Province was the most vitally affected and his government was in hiding. It is still in hiding!
That said let’s concede that the the government probably went beyond the words of the statute. And it almost immediately rescinded the authority. What do we want our leaders to do when they encounter a critical issue that the legislation does not address. Wring their hands and do nothing?
The takeaway is that we need more nuance in defining where action is appropriate.
Let's be clearer: The leader of the country was silent for the first two weeks of the protest. 'Hiding' to use your word. When he finally came out it was to ignore the law in order to appear decisive.
Don't be like that. It's not that he deliberately ignored the law, he negligently ignored the fine print of the law. I don't know of a single politician that can successfully be indecisive.
Why not just revoke the mandates? They were wrong and useless anyway - and already made us a laughingstock abroad.
Then they could have solved the problem AND obeyed the law. Win win!
Again and again. The masking mandates were a provincial decision. The border mandates were an American decision.
Again and again, the 14 day quarantine for returning residents was a Canadian decision. The ban from planes, trains, and EI was a Canadian decision. The billion dollar bribe to provinces to establish vax passports was a Canadian decision.
Phhh... I'm not going to argue in circles.
Millions were not allowed to fly domestically or internationally. Millions weren’t allowed on a taxpayer funded train. People were facing health taxes for being unvaccinated in Quebec. Want to buy food in New Brunswick? Not at a grocery store . ( it never happened but it was “floated”) The entire Covid “thing” was snowballing and had become quite frightening. There were more than one Gas The Unvaccinated signs. These brave people, the truckers, saved us all from going to a very dark place. I for one, will be forever grateful.
Most truckers were vaccinated. They are the brave people I am grateful for. Roughly 10% who were not vaxxed were not all crossing the border. Millions more were able to fly because they were vaxxed. Most of the mandates were provincial, some were municipal, and the Feds couldn’t change those for you anyway.
There is an ongoing pandemic. The truckers had over 3 months to squawk about the cross-border issue. They couldn’t be bothered to start whining until the last minute. How many of those in Ottawa, Windsor, Coutts and other blockades happily collected CERB and other handouts from the feds just months earlier?
I have seen a few signs bashing the unvaxxed. A very few. But talking of going to a very dark place, I have seen yellow Stars of David on too many grubby coats of men carrying flags and signs that are insults to all Canadians.
What was floated and never happened? So who cares?
Mobs are to be feared. You don’t know what might set them off. Covid-19 is not a “thing”. Everyone is still living with it. You can pretend it is over or no longer a “thing”. Or you continue to be angry at things that didn’t happen.
The ones who owe the truckers the most gratitude are those who supported the mandates.
The truckers saved us vax free from being sent to a very dark place, and I'm thankful.
But they saved the haters from following the road they were on all the way to a terrible end.
what a simple solution .. dangerous on so many fronts -
Yes, send in the tanks!!!
Put on your sequins and get ready to kick high, Paul, coz I found my opinion changed after watching Trudeau’s performance today. I still think there was some supercilious hairsplitting going on around the CSIS Act, but I believed he had asked his officials the right questions and I became convinced he had made a tough decision on the matter. There’s vivid tread marks on the cops he tossed under the bus, ‘natch, but I surprisingly found him to be what we used to call in the IC, “a good brief”. Now , if he could just wipe that shit-eating grin off his chops, I could vote for him again!
The PM was definitely well prepared. Remember though there was lots of emphasis on being proactive to prevent possible violence, and not reactive to a violent situation.
What did not sit well with me was the reference the PM made, as did Jody Thomas, that the protesters brought their children along as shields. I found the accusation offensive. Some families discuss current events, and no doubt the children were as eager to come along as the parents were to not leave them behind as they set out to the nation's capital.
You think it was educational to strap a gas can to a young child's body?
https://pressprogress.ca/photos-show-young-child-with-a-gas-can-strapped-to-their-body-next-to-parliament-hill/
I think there was a report of a child having frostbite, because the kids were in the cold trucks being human shields and probably having their hearing damaged by the loud continuous noise as well as probably catching covid from the idiots around them, while the convoy leaders were in their warm comfortable hotel rooms.
I am going to give the parents the benefit of the doubt, and assume they were close at hand and made certain the child was not in danger. Now someone could have approached the child, unscrewed the top, and thrown a match at them, but such fears may be misplaced. Your life experience may have been a bit more sheltered than the child you see. Some parents encourage their children to pitch in and assist, and the children appreciate being included. This is particularly true for farm and rural children as opposed to the experience of us city dwellers who tend to be helicopter parents. A bit of the story of the city mouse and the country mouse.
As for the frostbite accusation. You state, "you think there was a report". Thinking does not make it so.
PMJT and Jody Thomas in their testimony accused the parents of using the children as "human shields". I feel that is inappropriate and your description of them as "idiots" is likewise inappropriate.
I grew up on a farm and my parents were careful to keep us kids safe. Any trouble we got into was when they were not around. They would never have strapped a gas can to any small child because they were good parents and decent people, not selfish fools too lazy to think about their children's welfare.
"Human shields" is exactly what these children were, and I feel sorry for them having such bad parents.
I thought Trudeau was going to come in unable to suppress his confidence after the groundwork laid by all lackeys --instead, he appeared to me to be making it up as he went along. He looked guilty and much of what he said was complete fluff. In other words, I believed little of what he claimed went on behind the scenes.
"I can’t help noticing that the opposition leader hasn’t been his usual ebullient self this month." It's pretty clear that every time a minister or the PM opens their mouth on this topic you can be pretty sure they will create a cow patty and immediately step into it. Why would you want to get involved? Rather just sit back with your popcorn and watch the show. As they say - "You can't make this stuff up". Aside from that the opposition leader unafraid to go out and meet with Canadians in their backyard to listen to their concerns and solutions as he was in BC this week.
Firefighters have a plan of putting out a fire from the get go. However the actual plan of how to do this is developed when the scene of the fire has been observed and appraised.
The Fed's, standing back and watching the Laurel and Hardy show called the OPS gong show of how to not handle a protest, had to have felt like this is not getting any better.
Bringing the army into one's own Capitol to handle this situation would only have amped up the "Banana Republic" rhetoric.
Listening to and reading reports of this inquiry has only further proved to myself that the decision to use the Emergencies Act was the correct one.
Remember, unlike the decision makers at that snapshot in time, we now have the benefit of hindsight.
Thanks Paul for the great post 👏🏻👏🏻
Let's everyone just totally ignore that Trudeau could have engaged the protestor leaders in some way, and not insulted them with disdain, and that that would have made all the difference. A difference Trudeau did not want, because he WANTED to invoke the Emergencies Act.
If they really wanted to have a grownup conversation with our Prime Minister, they should not have been waving F*ck Trudeau flags all over the place, plus all the various racist flags, posters and buttons displayed that first weekend, such as yellow Star of David buttons which were for sale and which some of the Alberta idiots had been wearing in protests for a year or more.
And no one person could speak for all of them.
It would have made no diffierence, and could have ended up with an attack on the prime minister. Do not pretend otherwise.
Just like when that thug saw Chrystia Freeland in the hotel lobby. He didn't ask her a question or tell her what he did not like about federal policies, he just yelled foul insults. What an embarrassment.
It was a guy venting himself - and, gee, he used the f-word. He did not encroach upon her physically and did not accelerate his verbal attack. Compare to when "Freeland blocked by anti-pipeline protestors in Halifax" (YouTube description), in which she was closely surrounded and hemmed in physically by many protestors. Not one cry of outrage from the same mainstream media who freaked out about the f-word venter.
Here's the video
https://www.tiktok.com/@inchoohisdai/video/7136283663515340037?is_copy_url=1&is_from_webapp=v1&item_id=7136283663515340037
That thug and his female companions knew Freeland was likely in that hotel, so they had time to think up something halfways intelligent to say, but thug with his ragged shirt and his pants falling down could not think of anything but misogynistic abuse?
presumably not (i don't do tiktok) -- but was she physically constrained, leaned right into by a bunch surrounding her, as the pipeline protestors did? Yet no police called, no outrage... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YSn9uyLe2BM
--while you pretend you're not a fascist enabler? If you can't see that preemptive actions are not supportable, certainly not in invoking what was effectively Martial Law, then you are much farther-right than the so-called "far-right."
Still the question of why dialog / diplomacy was not not tried was not asked. Being afraid of people who disagree with you is a good enough reason. The question of why insult and denigrate people who disagree with you was not asked. Surely we must expect our government leaders to set their bar a lot higher than was the seen here.
I await Mr. Rouleau's conclusion and assume it will be the right one. I don't think I break any new ground when I say the only possible resolution was that these nutjobs were going to be removed by force, it's just a technicality whether it was authorized by the EA or something else. Even if trying to cut off the funds for paid hooligans to drive them away turns out to be done wrongly, there is no world in which it's better than having the police try to forcibly remove people, some of whom were armed.
Um, objectivity isn't your strong suit...
But Mikey's accuracy is right on.
--some of the people removed were armed? That seems to suggest some protestors right in the ranks "holding the line" had guns and were, perhaps, prepared to use them. Is that accurate?
My statement, as written, is accurate. Now go away.
Once people prove they are rude and arrogant, I feel quite relieved that I no longer have to waste my time engaging them.
I would like to commend Justice Rouleau and his team on this remarkable pulling of all threads. The report's advice will be of historic importance to our democracy.
Assuming that Trudeau is anything but a glib, superficial fraud who rode to power strictly on his famous last name and nice hair, doesn't make for successful journalism, in my view. Justin Trudeau wanted to invoke the Emergencies Act because his father did, that's the bottom line--being able to inflict it on a demographic that didn't vote for him and that he already has a habit of targeting just made it that much more satisfying for a proto-fascist who, by now, is so morally hollow he has no choice but to swallow his own swill and smile doing it.
You are right Paul, this commission couldn't possibly change my mind; mostly because everything we are witnessing now it revisionistic history. We'll never truly know what the actual plans or intentions were of everyone involved in that circus. I doubt even the witnesses are sure of anything at this point. I've crassly said that I didn't expect the government to hold itself accountable, but you've been a great help reading between the lines of testimony and it's your commentary that keeps me interested in the inquiry.
What I would like to see, not only from the Rouleau team but also from the witnesses and the spectators, is a focus on the actions and the results and make that the target for evaluation. Clearly there are lines of communications that were underused or neglected. Clearly the government had a legal tool at their disposal and nobody was properly trained on how to use it. These are areas with a real and measurable need for improvement. This is what this inquiry should exist for. Instead everywhere I turn everybody is waiting with bated breath for a 'gotch'ya' moment to nail anyone on the other side of the argument to the cross.
The damages, figurative or metaphorical, do not warrant such a negative reaction. In fact the overarching argument should be a lot simpler than the imagined Orwellian plot of government overreach. Regardless of the existence of a plan by the Police services at any stage of the protest and regardless of their intention to put this plan into action and regardless of the need of Emergencies act to put that plan into action, once the situation pushed the cabinet into considering invoking the Emergencies Act they also have to consider the harm in not invoking it. It's easy to criticize the decision now and say it was not needed, but if it had turned out that it was needed, how would you feel about the cabinet's inaction?
I think we need to be thankful that this is the most oppressive legal tool the government has their disposal and the worst that came out of using it is a lot of bad optics, nationally and internationally. Paul mentioned in this article that the PM "much preferred to explain his decision to use the act, rather than the decision to forego it." That's a missed opportunity. If everybody in the cabinet would have been on the same page, it would have been a good strategy to feed this inquiry the idea that the real problem was not invoking the act, but how it was invoked; more specifically the lack of due process that would prevent future governments from winging it like this one did in February.
Except that repealing the vaccination mandate for international truckers would have given not benefit unless the US also repealed its vaccination mandate
So very well written. Thank you.
Hats off to our PM for clearly rising to the moment.
If the Prime Minister doesn't believe you, that's your problem, not his.