Trudeau Was Justified in Using Emergency Law During Protests, Judge Says

Brian Platt
·4 min read
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(Bloomberg) -- Prime Minister Justin Trudeau met the legal threshold when he invoked emergency powers last year to clear a protest that had paralyzed the downtown of Canada’s capital city for weeks, a public inquiry has found.

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Trudeau’s government held reasonable concerns that it was facing a situation that “was worsening and at risk of becoming dangerous and unmanageable,” a commission led by Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Paul Rouleau said in the inquiry report, released Friday in Ottawa.

“It is regrettable that such a situation arose here, because in my view, it could have been avoided,” Rouleau wrote. His report pointed to “a series of policing failures” that “contributed to a situation that spun out of control.”

But Rouleau ultimately found that Trudeau and his cabinet made an “appropriate” decision to invoke Canada’s Emergencies Act. “I have concluded that in this case, the very high threshold for invocation was met,” he wrote.

“Invocation of the Emergencies Act is a drastic move, but it is not a dictatorial one,” the judge added.

The report’s conclusion gives Trudeau a significant political win after a rough start to the year, with his Liberal Party sliding in opinion polls and a steady drumbeat of reports about bickering within his caucus. Trudeau also has a new problem to address after the Globe and Mail newspaper reported on internal intelligence briefings that said China tried to interfere in the 2021 federal election with the goal of helping Trudeau be reelected.

The so-called “freedom convoy,” which caused gridlock and mayhem in Ottawa for three weeks in January and February 2022, was initially motivated by opposition to Covid vaccine mandates but morphed into a broader backlash against public-health restrictions and Trudeau himself.

After truckers and other protesters parked hundreds of vehicles in the streets near Canada’s Parliament, offshoot protests began blockading border crossings with the US, including the Ambassador Bridge from Windsor, Ontario, to Detroit — a crucial trade link for the North American automotive industry.

Trudeau invoked emergency powers on Feb. 14, citing the threat to Canada’s economy and the inability of police to end the protests. The extraordinary measures — which were revoked 10 days later — allowed authorities to freeze the bank accounts of key players in the protest, and enabled police to compel towing companies to haul away the big-rigs. In total, accounts containing about C$8 million ($6 million) were frozen.

Freezing bank accounts was controversial, but Rouleau concluded it was a reasonable move by the government to cut off the movement’s financing and persuade protesters to leave peacefully.

“The asset-freezing regime, while highly impactful on protesters, did not involve physical force or violence,” Rouleau’s report said. The measure was “a proportionate response to the situation” as it “sought to achieve an end to the unlawful protests that did not place the physical well-being of protesters or others at risk.”

However, Rouleau said the government should have included a humanitarian exception in the measure, such as for purchasing medicine or making child-support payments. He also said there should have been a clear procedure in place for how to unfreeze an account once the targeted person complied with the law.

Canada’s emergency powers law requires a public inquiry to be held within a year of the measures being used. Rouleau held 36 days of public hearings, with witnesses ranging from politicians to police officers to the protest organizers.

Trudeau was the final witness called, and said the emergency powers were necessary to ensure serious violence didn’t break out. His uptick in approval ratings at the end of last year was attributed by some pollsters to his confident testimony.

Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland and other senior officials in her department also testified, arguing that Canada’s trade reputation with the US was put at risk by the border blockades. They said it came at an especially sensitive time, as Canada was pushing the US to drop protectionist policies on electric-vehicle supply chains.

--With assistance from Stephen Wicary.

(Updates with judge’s comments on bank measures starting in 10th paragraph)

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