OTTAWA | The failures of law enforcement, intelligence, Ontario and federalism itself forced the Trudeau administration to resort to the State of Emergency Act to end the Freedom Convoy that paralyzed Ottawa more than three weeks a year ago.
• Also read: A year later, the protesters return to Ottawa
This is the main conclusion reached by Commissioner Paul Rouleau in his extensive report on the legitimacy of the application of this exceptional law, presented to Parliament on Friday.
“I conclude that the very high threshold for invoking the law has been reached in this case. I did it reluctantly,” wrote the Franco-Ontarian judge.
According to him, “The situation Canada experienced in 2022 was not a peaceful and lawful protest. Many of the protesters may have had that intention, but the situation spiraled out of control.”
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The escalation “probably could have been avoided” if the “police forces” and the “different levels of government” had been better prepared and had reacted differently to “manage the legitimate demonstrations,” estimates Commissioner Roll.
failure of federalism
Judge Rouleau believes the degenerate antisanitary and government demonstrations signal a “failure of federalism.”
“Faced with threats and emergencies in a federal system, it is necessary that all levels of government and their leaders go beyond political considerations to work together for the common good. Unfortunately, this was not always the case in January and February 2022,” the magistrate teases.
He notes Ontario’s absence in dealing with the crisis and deplores the fact that Premier Doug Ford has refused to testify before the commission to explain himself.
Judge Rouleau is also not kind to the police, whose organization and intelligence have proven to be lacking.
Violence
The main objective of the commission was to assess whether the danger was sufficient to invoke the emergency law for the first time since it was passed in 1988.
“The appeal threshold is where order collapses and liberty cannot be secured or is seriously threatened. In my opinion, this threshold has been reached, ”said the district judge.
He specifies that he “is satisfied that there was a convincing and credible factual basis which objectively supported the reasonable belief that the life, health and safety of Canadians were in serious danger”.
The Trudeau government invoked the emergency law on February 14, 2022. The first demonstrators of the convoy arrived in the federal capital on January 28, many of them with articulated lorries.
More demonstrations erupted in the days and weeks that followed, most notably at border crossings between Canada and the United States, but also in front of the Quebec National Assembly.
Here are some of Justice Rouleau’s 56 recommendations:
- Designate a single national intelligence coordinator for major national events
- Develop protocols for requests for additional police resources
- Create a Major Events Management Unit in Ontario
- Consider giving a department or agency the power to monitor social networks
- Identify critical transportation infrastructure and corridors and create protocols to protect them