In February 2022, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced he was invoking the 1988 Emergencies Act, a new Rubicon in Canadian history. 

The action marked the first time federal emergency powers had been activated in Canada since the “October Crisis of 1970,” when Trudeau’s father, Pierre Elliott Trudeau, invoked the War Measures Act of 1914, a move he initiated after a high-ranking Canadian official was kidnapped (and later killed) by political terrorists.