State of Emergency Commission | Justin Trudeau didn’t believe in the police plan

(OTTAWA) Law enforcement’s Feb. 13 plan to shut down the “freedom convoy” in Ottawa “wasn’t one,” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says. His confidence in the police was shaken and he felt that the use of the Emergency Measures Act was the only solution to put an end to the truck convoys that had multiplied across the country.

Mr. Trudeau was the last witness to answer questions from the Commission on the state of emergency on Friday. His testimony took place under high security, but there were no excesses except for a few calls to order from Judge Paul Rouleau for respect for decorum.

The Prime Minister said he did not take the decision lightly when the recommendation from the head of the public service, Janice Charette, arrived on his desk on February 14.

“I am absolutely serene and confident that I made the right choice,” he said.

There was then a consensus among the members of the Incident Response Group and Cabinet. The idea of ​​granting extraordinary powers to the authorities by other legislative means had been considered, but the process would have been too long. He said he gave himself a moment of reflection before making his decision.

“What if, when I had the opportunity to do something, I waited and the unthinkable happened within days? “, he said. He feared that people or police officers would be injured.

A plan deemed incomplete

Hundreds of heavy goods vehicles had been paralyzing downtown Ottawa for just over two weeks. Others blocked several border crossings, including the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, and Coutts, Alberta.

The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP), Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) and Ottawa police had drawn up a 73-page plan to end the protest in the federal capital the day before the declaration of the state of emergency, but the Prime Minister, who had obtained an account of it, considered it incomplete.

“We kept hearing there was a plan,” he said, adding that nothing happened after that.

The document tendered into evidence by Ottawa police attorney Jessica Barrow is dated February 13, but the final plan that led to the massive police operation to shut down the ‘freedom convoy’ was instead completed February 17.

Threat to national security?

The Prime Minister also believed that truck convoys in Ottawa and elsewhere in the country constituted a threat to national security even if it did not meet the definition in the law. However, the government refused to submit the legal opinion to the Commission, citing professional secrecy.

Trudeau said a vehicle was used to drive into a police roadblock in Coutts, Alta., and RCMP reported a cache of weapons there. He also noted that in Ottawa, about 30 police officers who tried to enforce the law by seizing gas cans were quickly surrounded by about 100 protesters and children were “used as human shields” to prevent the forces of order to intervene in several cities.

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) had also advised the government that people among the protesters were promoting political violence that had the potential to push a “lone wolf” into action.

And even though law enforcement had broken the blockades of Coutts and the Ambassador Bridge on the morning of February 14, protesters were preparing for more blockades in Ontario, British Columbia and Quebec.

The Emergency Measures Act rather defines a threat to national security as espionage and sabotage, foreign interference, use of serious violence, and activities aimed at overthrowing the government. This is the same definition that governs the work of CSIS when, for example, it must justify the use of wiretapping.

Mr. Trudeau defended a broader interpretation of a threat to national security, as ministers, senior government officials and CSIS Director David Vigneault had done in their testimony to the Commission.

But when asked by Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer Ewa Krajewska whether the threshold for resorting to Emergency Measures Act should be the same as that of CSIS, he replied in the affirmative.

The public inquiry led by Judge Paul Rouleau aims to determine whether the historic use of Emergency Measures Act to end the “freedom convoy” and blockades of border crossings elsewhere in the country was justified. He intends to submit his report to the Cabinet on February 6; it must then be tabled in Parliament no later than February 20, 2023.