In October 1970, to remedy a real but limited crisis—the taking of two hostages—the governments of Pierre Elliott Trudeau and Robert Bourassa had to construct a hazy theory. Canada faced, they wrote in official texts, an “apprehended insurrection.”
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police claimed at the time that there was not the slightest threat of insurrection on the horizon. But it was necessary to use this lie, because, without it, one could not enforce the War Measures Act, which allowed arrests, searches and other muscular actions to restore order.
Fifty-two years later, it is no longer necessary to lie or invent. The siege of which Ottawa has been the victim for two weeks is explicitly aimed, according to its organizers, at the overthrow of the government. In the Memorandum of Understanding published at the start of the protest and signed, they say, by 320,000 people, the organizers say they will maintain their illegal occupation of Parliament Hill until the government is replaced by a citizens’ committee made up of them and the governor general. They want to govern for 90 days, the time to abolish all sanitary measures in the country.
A Canadian state of siege
Certainly, they denounce violence and do not storm government buildings, as the American Trumpists did last year. The fact remains that we are in the presence of self-proclaimed insurgents who are holding the Hill hostage and, henceforth, several strategic border crossing points with the United States. They will only withdraw, they repeat, when the health decisions taken by democratically elected governments are canceled.
In recent days, they have watered down their wine and removed from their website the Memorandum of origin. And while on February 6, they demanded the dismissal not only of Justin Trudeau, but also of Yves-François Blanchet and Jagmeet Singh, alleged accomplices of the health dictatorship, they turned around on February 8 and now say ready to discuss with a coalition made up of opposition parties. Their spokesman, Tom Marazzo, said he was flabbergasted when he heard the accusation of insurrection. “We shoveled the snow, picked up the trash, fed the homeless,” he explained this week during a press conference. Certainly. A proper state of siege, Canadian style. But a state of siege all the same.
Former Bank of Canada governor and potential future Liberal leader Mark Carney was pretty tough on the Globe and Mail this week, attacking the besiegers and the Prime Minister in equal parts.
“The objectives of the leaders of the so-called Freedom Convoy were clear from the start: to overthrow the government that Canadians elected less than six months ago,” he wrote, accusing the authorities of having “facilitated the entry of the convoy into the heart of our capital” and for letting the participants settle in. In a sentence that seems to be addressed to Justin Trudeau, he adds: “Crises do not end on their own. You can not spinner your way out of failure. Is this text the first salvo of Carney’s campaign to succeed Trudeau? If yes, it is well sent.
Pontius Pilate Competition
Between Ottawa’s police chief saying there’s no ‘police solution’ to the crisis, provincial premier Doug Ford saying he doesn’t have the power to telling the police how to act, and Prime Minister Trudeau, assuring that under no circumstances will he call the army, we attended a Pontius Pilate competition for two weeks.
However, it is no longer even necessary to declare the existence of an insurrection, apprehended or not, to give the federal government the power to act directly in a crisis situation. The Emergencies Act of 1985, purged of the heinous excesses of the War Measures Act, allows the federal government to take control of the situation “if it believes, on reasonable grounds, that a a state of emergency justifying in this case extraordinary measures on a temporary basis”. All he has to do is ask, a prioripermission to the provinces concerned and to obtain approval, a posteriori, the state of emergency by a majority of the chamber. If Justin Trudeau wants to indulge in his favorite sport, which is to wreak havoc on the Conservatives, challenge them to vote against the return of law and order to the country.
We may one day know why Trudeau deemed it politically useful to let the “insurrectionists” settle in front of parliament. It may be pure weakness, because it is true that he had let indigenous activists paralyze the rail infrastructure for more than 20 days two years ago. We already know why the Poilievre conservatives supported the occupation: in order to attract Maxime Bernier’s voters to them. Doug Ford’s inaction is thought to be due to the ideological closeness between the besiegers and his electorate. Their common denominator is an inexcusable resignation from their essential function of defending laws and democracy against those who want to impose their vision of things by force and illegality. Trudeau, Ford, Poilievre failed in the task of making the country “order, peace and good government” prevail. The convoys that are spreading elsewhere in the country and in the world draw their strength and their audacity from the weakness and the resignation of these three irresponsible people. The time has come to quote again the words that the Virgin Mary is said to have spoken at Fatima: “Poor Canada! »
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