Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino rises during question period in Ottawa on June 6. Fred Chartrand / The Canadian Press
If you are a cabinet minister, you are used to playing the partisan game of bob and weave in parliamentary committees. It may be difficult for liberal ministers to understand that the commission reviewing the use of the Emergency Act is not the same.
So someone, specifically someone named Justin Trudeau, should say them in clear, loud terms: This is different.
It is different because the executive, Mr. Trudeau’s cabinet, has a duty to be accountable for taking an extraordinary step and creating special powers of the state. It’s not just another game to keep the opposition from winning, because the government has an obligation to show Parliament that it meets the high standard for using the law – that there was no other law that could do the job.
However, it is not just the Minister of Public Security, Marco Mendicino, who did not fulfill this duty when he deceived Canadians by saying that the police forces asked the government to invoke the Emergency Law.
Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland, the government’s main player in imposing emergency economic measures that included the unsecured freeze on bank accounts, dodged and dodged Tuesday night in special committee hearings that reviews the use of the Emergency Act. And the ministers of Mr. Trudeau has mostly treated audiences as if their job was to get past them without giving too much information.
We should wait for the government to hurry to tell us more. There was an emergency, that’s for sure. The convoys had blocked the border crossings and downtown Ottawa. Police were unable to move trucks parked in Wellington St. for weeks. in front of Parliament, we have been told, because tow truck drivers were facing death threats.
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland accused of being evasive during committee appearance on Ottawa’s use of emergency law
What we need to know is that nothing more could have been done than to enforce the Emergency Act. And instead of giving details of what was raised, or notes from the briefings, or even a minister telling us in detail how they came to the conclusion that there was no other option, we listened to vague assurances.
Mr Mendicino was doing just that when he repeatedly said in recent months that police had asked the government to invoke the law. That was not true, and the statement that it could still cost his political future to the future minister. As Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair said on Tuesday, police had expressed a desire for more tools, but did not call for the use of the legislation. The statement of Mr. Mendicino may only have been designed to divert questions about why the government decided to do so.
On Tuesday night, Mrs. Freeland showed everyone that you can divert questions just by making them escape.
Senator Claude Carignan, for example, repeatedly asked if U.S. officials had offered to send tow trucks, relevant because one of the reasons mentioned for the need for emergency powers was that tow truck operators they could be ordered to clean the vehicles. New Democrat MP Matthew Green repeatedly asked Mrs Freeland if she took note of her talks with the bank’s chief executives about the freeze on accounts. No answer. Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin went nowhere to ask the deputy prime minister what he had judged before resorting to the event.
“We need information, documents, not figure skating performances,” Fortin said.
To be fair, it is good that some of the documents requested do not exist. Ms. Freeland never responded if Finance Canada had figures on the economic impact of the blockades, but her testimony that the impact was large, and potentially ruinous if the blockades continued, seems clear enough that no one should answer. However, when MPs ask if there are figures, they should receive an answer.
Mr. Blair, testifying after Ms. Freeland, was a little closer. He talked about his conversations with police chiefs about the difficulty of getting tow trucks or the need to designate certain protected places. He argued that invoking the act also provides protection against blockades that reappear at border crossings.
It was almost as if Mr. Blair was doing something to explain the government’s decision and argue how it was done. Almost. It is a pity that the Liberal cabinet does not know that it is up to them to present this case.
Not only can they tell Canadians that the Emergency Act was necessary, but they need to show them.
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