(OTTAWA) Ontario Premier Doug Ford and Deputy Premier Sylvia Jones won’t have to tell their side of the story to the Emergency Commission. They had been subpoenaed two weeks ago, but the Federal Court partially accepted their arguments.
Posted at 11:21 a.m.
Justice Simon Fothergill concludes that these subpoenas are valid, but are inapplicable when the Legislative Assembly of Ontario is sitting due to parliamentary privilege. The Attorney General of the province had argued that elected officials cannot be summoned when parliamentary business is in progress or 40 days before or after each legislative session.
Commission prosecutors wanted Mr. Ford and Mr.me Jones, who was responsible for public safety in Ontario during the “freedom convoy”, testified on November 10. Faced with their repeated refusals to cooperate, the commission’s prosecutors sent them a summons to appear on Monday.
Lawyers from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Ottawa Coalition representing downtown residents and businesses, and the Canadian Constitution Foundation wanted to hear from the two politicians.
Premier Ford’s inaction when hundreds of trucks paralyzed downtown Ottawa last winter was raised during Mayor Jim Watson’s testimony during the first days of the public inquiry. The Ontario premier had even refused to participate in a federal-provincial-municipal tripartite table. He then considered that it was a crisis that had to be managed by the police.
The political contest between the Progressive Conservative government of Doug Ford and the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau has received little attention in the testimony to date. Mr. Ford was then less than six months from the election that would keep him in power, and some federal conservatives had given their support to the demonstrators.
The public inquiry, led by Franco-Ontarian judge Paul Rouleau, is trying to determine whether it was justified for the federal government to resort to this legislation for the first time in its history in order to put an end to the convoy of trucks in Ottawa and blockages at border crossings elsewhere in the country.
The Commission is hearing from Windsor’s mayor and deputy police chief on Monday. She had spent the last few weeks listening to residents, elected officials, police officers and “freedom convoy” demonstrators in Ottawa.
More details to come.