In January, a convoy of truckers and their supporters converged on Canada’s capital, Ottawa, to oppose vaccine mandates, COVID-19 lockdowns, and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. The protests turned into a three-week occupation that shut down large parts of the city, prompting Trudeau to invoke emergency powers to evict the occupiers. Trudeau’s use of emergency powers was controversial and criticized by some as unnecessary and excessive. Now, a public inquiry is investigating the debacle, and no one is walking away looking good.
The convoy protest was unprecedented in Canada’s history — never before had vehicles been used to blockade a city. Meanwhile, in another part of Ontario (the province where this all took place), convoy protesters used vehicles to blockade the Ambassador Bridge, closing a border crossing that accounts for 25% of U.S.-Canadian trade. Some protest leaders called for overturning the government, but the vast majority of participants simply wanted pandemic-related public health measures rescinded. A small number of neo-Nazis infiltrated the convoy and were quickly kicked out by protesters, but they were used by convoy critics to misrepresent all those involved as fascists. Meanwhile, convoy supporters ignored consistent reports that some protesters were harassing and threatening locals. Most Canadians, including many sympathetic to the convoy, understood that the protest, while initially acceptable, had gotten completely out of hand.
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Ottawa’s mayor claimed that the city lacked the manpower to clear the protesters. Local towing companies, citing safety concerns, refused to remove convoy vehicles. Ontario’s conservative government, after going AWOL for two weeks, declared a state of emergency and used its expanded authority to clear the Ambassador Bridge blockade. Three days later, on Feb. 14, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act. Bank accounts of convoy supporters were frozen. Protests that could potentially end in violence were banned.
Using the Emergencies Act was immediately controversial. While provincial emergencies are declared in Canada relatively often (i.e., floods, wildfires), the last federal emergency in Canada was in 1970. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, or the CCLA, immediately sued, arguing that the government did not meet the clearly defined thresholds for invoking the act and thus was illegitimately infringing on fundamental liberties, such as free expression and free association. The CCLA also argued that the clearing of the Ambassador Bridge demonstrated that no emergency federal powers were needed to end protests and that it was implausible that the protests presented a nationwide threat that undermined Canadian sovereignty. In the months that followed, many of the claims used by Trudeau to justify emergency powers turned out to be false. For example: The convoy protest did not receive substantial foreign funding or Russian support, and no police force asked for a federal emergency.
For accountability’s sake, the Emergencies Act requires that the government hold a public inquiry that retroactively explores why emergency powers were invoked. But the inquiry has so far only shown that no one can agree on who was responsible for what. Trudeau and Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson, both liberals, are trying to pin the blame on Doug Ford, Ontario’s conservative premier. Meanwhile, Ontario is arguing that it empowered police but that it would’ve been inappropriate for the provincial government, as an elected body, to intervene directly. The incompetence of various police agencies is also on display. However, as the CCLA has pointed out, amid this whirlpool of blame, there has been no attempt to show the need for emergency powers, only a discussion of who let the protests get out of hand.
If that trend continues, it seems that Trudeau will escape accountability for a choice that, in many people’s eyes, has diluted fundamental restrictions on the federal government’s power.
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Adam Zivo is a Canadian columnist and policy analyst who relocated to Ukraine earlier this year to report on the Russia-Ukraine war. He is writing a book on how the war is experienced by average Ukrainians.
