The special committee looking into the invocation of the Emergencies Act is recalling ministers to testify in light of the recent federal court decision deeming it unjustified.
The committee composed of MPs and senators passed a motion on Feb. 13 asking Attorney General Arif Virani and Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc to testify.
The two ministers were not in these roles when the Liberal government invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, 2022, to deal with cross-country protests and border blockades. Their predecessors were both dropped from cabinet during the summer shuffle.
The committee, established by law to review the invocation, adopted a watered-down version of a motion from Conservative MP Glen Motz, who initially sought to call to committee former Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino and Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland.
The government’s use of the act did “not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness—justification, transparency and intelligibility—and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration,” wrote Justice Mosley in his ruling.
“Was this legal? Did they follow the rules of law? It wasn’t charter-compliant. Those are all things that we need to examine as a committee,” Mr. Motz said in arguing for his motion.
Liberal MP Sherry Romanado brought forward a motion to translate necessary documents into both official languages and to address the Mosley decision. She highlighted the committee’s time constraints and the expectation from Canadians for a final report by June.
The translation of the approximately 250,000 documents consulted by Commissioner Paul Rouleau in his 2023 report on the use of the Emergencies Act was a contentious issue during the meeting. Conservative MP Larry Brock said that a full translation would cost over $300 million and take years.
MP Matthew Green of the NDP argued a full translation was unnecessary.
It is not in “our mandate to be a book report club for Rouleau, or any other judicial proceeding,” he said. “That was not in the spirit, nor in the language of any testimony that I’ve heard.”
The final motion determined that senior officials from the Privy Council and Translation Bureau would testify for 90 minutes at the next meeting on how to proceed with the necessary translation work.
Mr. Rouleau justified the federal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to clear convoy protests in February 2022. At a Feb. 17, 2023, press conference following the release of the Public Order Emergency Commission’s final report, Mr. Rouleau announced, “After careful reflection, I have concluded that the very high threshold required for the invocation of the act was met.” He determined that, on Feb. 14, 2022, the cabinet had reasonable grounds to believe a national emergency existed, threatening Canada’s security and necessitating special temporary measures.
