A civil liberties group says the fact that the federal government has yet to prove that the legal threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act earlier this year to address the Freedom Convoy protests was met will be the group’s focus in an upcoming public hearing.
Cara Zwibel, director of the fundamental freedoms program at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), said her group will participate in the hearing “with an open mind,” but noted that the commission needs to scrutinize the constitutionality of Ottawa’s decision to invoke the Act.
“In our view, the government has yet to prove that the legal threshold to invoke the act was met, and the burden is on them, not the other way around.”
Apart from the question of meeting the legal threshold to invoke the Act, Zwibel also listed several questions that she said the inquiry should address, including whether there were genuine concerns about threats to national security, what was the evidence supporting the government’s belief that there was a threat to security or a serious threat to the lives, health, or safety of Canadians, and whether the government considered any alternatives to tackle the situation.
“How did the protests and blockades impact the rights and freedoms of people in Canada? And perhaps more significantly, how did the emergency orders that were put in place impact the rights and freedoms of people in Canada?” she said.
Accountability
The Freedom Convoy protest began in late January to protest the federal government’s COVID-19 restrictions and the mandatory vaccination mandate. While refusing to meet with the protesters, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, for the first time since the act replaced the War Measures Act in 1988, which had been invoked three times: during the two World Wars and the 1970 FLQ crisis in Quebec.“When the Emergencies Act was first proposed as a bill, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association advocated for meaningful oversight and accountability mechanisms to ensure that the gross violations of civil liberties that had taken place under the War Measures Act would not be repeated,” Zwibel said.
Alain Bartleman, the CCLA’s special adviser on indigenous issues, noted that the act is meant to address issues of greater significance than a civil protest.
“This law has to be implemented by the federal government to face different emergency situations that are of such proportion or nature as to exceed the capacity of a democratic process to resort to its power, necessitate a reasonable base so that we can settle any matter threatening the safety in Canada, and such that it is a national emergency,” Bartleman said at the Oct. 12 press conference.
“It has to be demonstrated that the lives and safety of Canadians have been seriously endangered and that provinces did not have the measures to face this kind of measures.”