What the federal government's new powers might mean for the Ottawa protest

Tuesday, February 15, 2022

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What the federal government's new powers might mean for the Ottawa protest

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and his cabinet have triggered the Emergencies Act — a decades-old law that gives sweeping powers to the federal government to establish order during a crisis. The law, which has never before been invoked, gives the federal government substantial short-term powers.

Here's a look at some of the biggest questions about the act and what it might mean for the protest in Ottawa:

What can the federal government do now?

In the context of the Ottawa protest, Trudeau said the federal powers will be used to prohibit people from illegally gathering in the city's downtown core and to order tow truck companies in the area to help remove big rigs used in the protests.

The RCMP, which normally doesn't carry out many policing functions in Ontario, will be empowered to enforce all municipal bylaws and provincial offences.

The cabinet is also directing banks and financial institutions to halt the flow of funds to protest organizers through amendments to the Proceeds of Crime and Terrorist Financing Act. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the corporate accounts of truckers participating in the Ottawa blockade will be frozen and their insurance will be suspended.

Is there a role for the military?

The Emergencies Act itself is silent on the role of the military during this sort of emergency. Trudeau said the government is "not using the Emergencies Act to call in the military," so a role for the Canadian Armed Forces is off the table for now.

How long would these powers be in effect?

As soon as the cabinet declares an emergency, the powers go into effect immediately. The act stipulates, however, that Trudeau and his ministers also must go before Parliament to seek approval from MPs and senators within seven days. The act says that these extraordinary powers are time-limited to just 30 days, although they could be extended.

What do experts think?

Reaction is mixed. Wesley Wark, a senior fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and one of the country's top intelligence experts, said invoking the Emergencies Act against the blockades is "long overdue." The occupation of downtown Ottawa has been mishandled by local authorities and law enforcement, and one level of government should be "clearly in charge of the situation," Wark said.

Leah West, a former national security lawyer with the federal Justice Department, takes a different view. West told CBC News she's not convinced that the ongoing protests rise to the level of a public order emergency. "As someone who studies the law very carefully, I'm kind of shocked, to be honest, that the government actually believes this meets the definition to even invoke the act," she said.

More on this issue

Read the full story, including more on what the act says, here .

ANALYSIS | By invoking the Emergencies Act, Trudeau tries to seize a new crisis

Hacked convoy data shows more than half of donations came from U.S.

Valentine's Day dance

(Bernat Armangue/The Associated Press)

Laurence Fournier Beaudry and Nikolaj Soerensen, of Canada, perform their routine in the ice dance competition at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing on Monday. Follow CBC's Olympic coverage here.

In brief

The now-cleared blockade at the Ambassador Bridge border crossing in Windsor, Ont., couldn't have come at a worse time for the Canadian economy. Democrats are expected to make one more push to pass their agenda in a large spending bill — and one dilemma is whether they'll include a "Buy American"-style policy that incentivizes companies to build electric vehicles in the U.S. The outcome holds considerable stakes for the industry in southern Ontario, with automobiles being Canada's second-largest export product to the U.S. after oil. In an interview with CBC News, Michigan Democrat Debbie Dingell mused about possible consequences from days of blockages at the top border crossing, caused by opposition to COVID-19 vaccine mandates in Canada. When asked if this episode makes her question the wisdom of relying on imports from Canada, Dingell replied: "I'm going to be very blunt: It does. We cannot let ourselves be held hostage to these kinds of situations. If this is going to become a new and regular situation, we've got to bring our supply chain back home. We can't count on this bilateral relationship we have." Read more about what's at stake for Canada here.

Christian faith — with an overtly evangelical feel — flows like an undercurrent through the protests in Ottawa. It's unclear how many of the roughly 4,000 people who gathered in the Parliament precinct this past weekend call themselves Christians, but the biblical references were everywhere — in the handmade placards lining the stone and iron fence at the border of Parliament Hill reading, "We are praying for Justin [Trudeau]," quoting parts of Psalm 23 or paraphrasing 1 Corinthians 1:27 in the New Testament: "God chose the foolish to shame the wisdom of the wise." While no mainstream Christian organization has thrown its official support behind the Freedom Convoy, some of the funds raised for the cause have been donated through the GiveSendGo crowdfunding site, which is administered by a Christian group. A hack of the GiveSendGo campaign revealed the names of more than 92,000 donors. The hack also revealed messages that accompanied the donations, including more than 13,000 references to "God" or "Jesus," according to an analysis by Vice magazine. "I take it one step at a time," protester George Dyck said after the federal government announced its new emergency powers. "In all honesty, God is my shield, and that is what I stand by." Read more about how faith fuels the resistance here.

An organizer of the border protest in Coutts, Alta., says a decision has been made to roll out this morning after RCMP arrested at least 13 people and seized a case of firearms and ammunition. "We were infiltrated by an extreme element.… Our objective was to be here peacefully," Marco Van Huigenbos said. "To keep that message going, we want to peacefully leave Coutts and return to our families." Mounties said in a statement early Monday that they became aware of a small organized group within the larger protest at Coutts, which led to 11 arrests. They say they had information that the group had access to a cache of firearms and ammunition in three trailers. Officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armour, a machete, a large quantity of ammunition and high-capacity firearm magazines. RCMP also made two other arrests: a man on his way to the site who police say had two weapons in his vehicle; and a driver who police say sped up and drove toward officers at a checkpoint north of Milk River, before swerving at the last moment. Read more about the weapons seizure here.

The accounting firm that prepared former U.S. president Donald Trump's annual financial statements says the documents "should no longer be relied upon" after New York's attorney general said they regularly misstated the value of assets. In a letter to the Trump Organization's lawyer on Feb. 9, Mazars USA LLP advised the company to inform anyone who had gotten the documents not to use them when assessing the financial health of the company and the former president. The letter came just weeks after New York Attorney General Letitia James said her office uncovered evidence Trump and the company used "fraudulent or misleading" valuations of its golf clubs, skyscrapers and other property to get loans and tax benefits. Trump has given his Statement of Financial Condition — a yearly snapshot of his holdings — to banks to secure hundreds of millions of dollars worth of loans on properties, such as a Wall Street office building and a Florida golf course, and to financial magazines to justify his place on the list of the richest people in the world. Read more about Trump's finances here.

Now for some good news to start your Tuesday: Winnipeg teacher Stephanie Rempel's Grade 3 students were met with a stack of brand-new books on Monday — paid for in part by a kind stranger who gave Rempel a pick-me-up when she needed it most. It all started on Saturday, when Rempel made her annual trip to a local bookstore to refresh the titles in her class at Harold Hatcher Elementary School. When it came time to pay, she realized the $600 budget she had from her school wasn't going to cover the books she chose. That's when another customer, overhearing the conversation, asked if the books were for Rempel's students. When the teacher told her they were, the woman put a stack of bills totalling $80 on the counter. It wasn't until Rempel made it out to her car with all the books that the woman's generosity really hit her. "I got very emotional," she said. "With so much negativity happening in the last weeks with what's going on in Canada and the pandemic … for me, it was the positive moment that I needed." Read more about this story here.

FIRST PERSON

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As I walked into my first job at CBC, I knew my experience of being what we then called a “battered wife” would have been deemed a bias, writes CBC podcast host Anna Maria Tremonti. Read the column here.

Tune into the Player's Own Voice podcast daily during Beijing 2022 to hear the athletes' stories in their voices like never before. Subscribe and never miss a conversation.

Taking the public temperature on COVID-19

Nearly two full years have passed since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a global pandemic. Now, from the Coutts border-crossing blockade in Alberta, to the streets around Parliament Hill, it’s obvious that there are some people with very strong opinions about how the disease is being handled.

But beyond the noise of these chaotic protests, how exactly do Canadians feel about how we’ve weathered COVID-19? And how do they feel about the protests?

David Coletto is the CEO of the polling firm Abacus Data, which has been asking people across the country for their thoughts. He breaks down what the numbers tell us so far.

The margin of error for the data discussed in today’s episode is about 2.5 to 2.6 per cent.
Listen to today's episode

Today in history: Feb. 15

1946: The federal government says a Soviet spy ring exists in Canada. The revelations — from Igor Gouzenko, a former clerk at the Soviet embassy in Ottawa — led to charges against 21 people. Eleven were convicted.

1961: The entire United States figure skating team dies in a plane crash in Brussels. The 18 skaters — accompanied by judges, coaches and backers — were heading to Prague for the world championships, which were cancelled.

1982: The oil rig Ocean Ranger sinks in a storm 315 kilometres east of St. John's. All 84 crew members died, most of them from Newfoundland. An American inquiry found the rig's U.S. owners had failed to provide adequate training and safety equipment.

1990: Twenty-thousand white demonstrators gather in Pretoria to protest the freeing of Nelson Mandela and the legalization of the African National Congress.

2003: Millions of people march in massive peace rallies in Canada, Germany, Italy, Russia, Pakistan, Hong Kong, Japan, South Africa, Britain and many other European countries to protest against an impending U.S.-led war on Iraq.