(Ottawa) Hounded by his adversaries, the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, offered few concrete answers to defend the historical recourse to the Emergency Measures Act in February. He was the first witness to be questioned by the joint committee made up of deputies and senators responsible for examining why and how the government endowed itself with extraordinary powers.
Posted at 9:00 p.m.
Updated at 10:15 p.m.
“It doesn’t make sense,” exclaimed Conservative Senator Claude Carignan. He said he still tries to understand how the government was able to invoke this legislation to put an end to the blockades of border crossings and the convoy of trucks that paralyzed downtown Ottawa for three weeks.
“The level of disruption on the streets in Ottawa was unprecedented,” said Minister Mendicino. Ontario’s Highway Traffic Act did not allow police to commandeer tractor-trailers to remove heavy goods vehicles.
He would not say if the city and the Ontario government had exhausted all their resources before February 14, when the federal government resorted to the Emergency Measures Act. He also avoided naming the provinces that would have asked him to invoke it. “We have discussed with several provinces,” he replied.
Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin argued that a total of seven provinces, including Quebec, and three territories did not need this legislation. “How can you claim that there was an emergency in all of Canada,” he asked.
“At that time, there was an emergency situation and we created the conditions to restore public security,” Mendicino replied.
The Conservative MP compared his answers to “ bullshit before being reprimanded by the committee chair for his unparliamentary language. He asked that the documents on which the Cabinet relied to make its decision be made public.
MNA Rhéal Fortin also asked that the written opinions received by the government be disclosed as part of the committee’s work.
Justice Minister David Lametti testified afterwards. “The rights are not unlimited,” he replied to Conservative MP Glen Motz. We targeted the illegal protests, not the legal ones. We did not attack freedom of speech. »
He recalled that the use of the Emergencies Act had limited public gatherings, given law enforcement the power to commandeer truck-trailers, prevented people from going to the sites of demonstrations deemed illegal, prevented people from bringing supplies there and allowed banks to freeze participants’ assets without obtaining a court order.