Any good police officer will tell you that if they cannot find a law to restrict or prohibit the actions of a citizen, then those actions are most probably lawful. This logic is beautifully simple, highlighting the shoreline where the enforcement of the existing law ends and aspirational politics begin. The independence of the police has been a gift given to us by our forefathers; like ancient agricultural field drains, we don’t recognize the compelling benefits of the hidden engineering until they are broken.
The police’s ability to act independently is just one of the questions that this recent matter of the use of the Emergencies Act raises. This is a weighty enough issue on its own, but a closer look at this “shoreline” between police enforcement and political policy reveals a desperate and surprisingly consistent inevitability in the actions of Justin Trudeau.
The current parliamentary obsession with who called for the Emergencies Act to be invoked is nothing more than a fatal misdirection for Canadians—a deflection from the alarming issues that we should be thinking about right now given the real threats to our Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our way of life, and even the existence of our nation as we know it.
Consider that even if the Ottawa Police Service or the RCMP did ask for the Emergencies Act to be invoked, it is still the sole responsibility of the government to assess whether the legal preconditions within the act and Section 1 of the Constitution Act were met to authorize and unleash this kind of power. Justice Minister David Lametti knows this very well and is, no doubt, content to allow the callow Marco Mendicino, the public safety minister, to hold this bucket and continue with this flimsy strategy of blaming the police. If Mr. Mendicino does not understand where this is leading him, he might speak with former finance minister Bill Morneau about the price tag of protecting a narcissist in the midst of a scandal.
This is a prickly situation for Justin Trudeau.
Let us not waste time talking about the procedural and technical questions of who asked for the Emergencies Act, for it is simply a misdirection and is essentially irrelevant when placed within the actual policy framework that Trudeau is working on for Canada.
The crucial question here is, why was it so important to shatter this peaceful, charter-empowered protest by truckers, veterans, and farmers—a.k.a. decent hard-working Canadians—with such a heavy hand?
If we have the courage to ask this comparative “cause and effect” question, we will discover that the implicit plea of the convoy was that our constitutionally protected freedoms—our rights to move, congregate, associate, peacefully protest, maintain the privacy of our medical information, and maintain the autonomy over our bodies so as not be coerced into medical treatments—were all being egregiously violated by our own government. The people of Canada were highlighting a policy misalignment with Canadian values and asking Trudeau to justify the policy using our laws.
The people of Canada need to understand that the Freedom Convoy for many Canadians represented a national alarm system that reminded us that we are being pulled away from the moorings that built this country; that something is radically wrong with the relationship between government and the governed. This was a good-faith question by earnest, hard-working people who stood up for their families, their communities, and their way of life.
But it was an impossible question to answer for a “re-setting” “post-nationalist” globalist prime minister. This conversation would isolate and (God forbid) actually define the destructive revolutionary policies being deployed against Canadians and the national sovereignty of the Dominion of Canada.
When examined in this light, Trudeau’s actual response appears perfectly consistent with his strategically stated “resetting” and “post-national” aspirations. It was easy for him: just don’t have the discussion, squish the “small fringe minority,” and continue with the actual reset agenda en route to post-nationhood and a shining future in global governance. Voila.
So who cares who called for the utilization of the Emergencies Act! Trudeau’s only choice was to deploy the act because it was the only way to escape the conversation the Freedom Convoy was begging him to have with the nation, and it was the only way to avoid the glaring revelation that defining Canada as “the first post-national state” actually means that his agenda is to seriously de-construct (destroy) the legal framework, the culture, and the way of life that we have known as a people.
Justin Trudeau has no interest in Canadian law other than to use it as a tool to advance his revolutionary agenda and silence critics. The supremacy of the Constitution of Canada designed to enshrine and protect our rights is simply an annoying inconvenience for him that he must appear to pay lip service to while he completes his work. He and his cohort hope we won’t notice.
It is good for us to remember that, in the same circumstances, a “good faith” answer offered by a true Canadian statesman would have listened first and then used the charter as a framework for unifying the nation, restoring trust, and releasing the nation to its potential. The response we got from Justin Trudeau’s government was at least consistent with his strategy for Canada.
So it seems that Mr. Mendicino will have to resign (or whatever) and the Liberal-NDP minority government will deploy some obfuscating pseudo-accountable press release that inevitably implies a sense of responsible closure of the matter with the hope that this vitally necessary aforementioned conversation never happens.
This experience with the Emergencies Act should reveal the truth that Canada cannot be grown as a strong independent nation and also be built into a “post-national state” at the same time, anymore than you can build a strong and proud schooner and a doghouse out of the same wood at the same time.
The ugly cracks in this Liberal-NDP compact are now visible. The nation will have this necessary conversation, sooner or later.
