Ottawa Feb 15 :- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare step of declaring a national public order emergency Monday in a push to end protests that have paralysed the center of the Canadian capital for more than two weeks and reverberated across the country.
Trudeau and several of his Cabinet ministers said the move would allow the government to take a variety of steps, including freezing bank accounts of protesters, to clear the blockade of about 400 trucks in Ottawa and smaller protests that have closed border points in Alberta and Manitoba.
“We cannot and will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue,” the prime minister said in a speech to the nation, pointing to “serious challenges to law enforcement’s ability to effectively enforce the law.”
The invocation of the Emergencies Act confers enormous, if temporary, power on the federal government.
It allows authorities to move aggressively to restore public order, including banning public assembly and restricting travel to and from specific areas. But Trudeau and members of his Cabinet offered repeated assurance that the act would not be used to suspend “fundamental rights.”
It has been half a century since emergency powers were last invoked in Canada. Trudeau’s father, Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, imposed them during a terrorism crisis in Quebec. Monday was the first time that the 1988 Emergencies Act has been used.
The response by police and all levels of government to the crisis, which included an almost weeklong blockade of an economically critical border crossing with United States, has been widely criticised as inadequate. Justin Trudeau, some critics contend, should have intervened earlier and perhaps even deployed troops to break up the protest.
On Monday, Trudeau said he would not use his authority under the declaration, which will last for 30 days, to bring in the military, reiterating his previous position against intervention by the armed forces.
But Canada’s justice minister, David Lametti, outlined a wide array of special powers now at the government’s disposal.
Police will now be able to seize trucks and other vehicles used in blockades. The measure will formally ban demonstrations that “go beyond lawful protest,” he said, and the government will formally ban blockades in designated areas like border crossings, airports and the city of Ottawa.
Tow-truck operators, who have been reluctant to cooperate with police, will now be compelled to work with law enforcement agencies to clear Ottawa’s streets and the border crossings at Coutts, Alberta; and Emerson, Manitoba.
While the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the national force, will not take over policing in Ottawa from that city’s municipal service, its members will now be allowed to enforce provincial laws and local bylaws and carry out any federal orders made under the Emergencies Act.
Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister and finance minister, outlined several measures that include expanding anti-money-laundering and anti-terrorism powers to control the online crowdfunding platforms that have helped finance the protests. Credit card processors and fundraising services will be required to report any blockade-related campaigns to Canada’s anti-money-laundering agency.
A police officer talks to one of the trucker protesters who are blocking streets near the Canadian Parliament building in downtown Ottawa February 11, 2022. (New York Times)
Police will be exchanging information with banks about protesters, and their personal and business accounts may be frozen. Insurance companies will be required to revoke insurance on any vehicles used in blockades.
Trudeau promised that the government would soon announce financial assistance for stores, restaurants and other business in Ottawa that have been forced to close because of the occupation.
On Monday morning, as Trudeau was outlining his decision with the premiers of Canada’s 10 provinces, the Mounties said that a large cache of weapons, including guns, body armour and a machete, had been discovered in three trailers at the Coutts border blockade.
When the elder Trudeau declared an emergency nearly 52 years ago, he relied not on the law his son used Monday but on a predecessor, the War Measures Act, and his challenge was not civil unrest but terrorism. A group of Quebec separatists, who had conducted a bombing campaign in Montreal, had kidnapped Quebec’s deputy premier and a British diplomat. Pierre Laporte, the deputy premier, was later assassinated.
On Monday, several national security experts praised the current prime minister’s decision.
“The Emergencies Act was necessary in the face of the breakdown of law and order in parts of Canada and the economic and reputational costs that Canada suffered with some of its allies, particularly the United States,” said Wesley Wark, a national-security expert and a senior fellow at the Center for International Governance Innovation, a Canadian public policy group. “I expect some stepped-up law enforcement in the next couple of days.”
