Ottawa was brought under control until after the act was invoked, but that doesn’t mean it was needed. The Ottawa protests were ended using already existing powers to control crowds, as well as to induce tow truck drivers to assist. Every single charge against the protesters that has been made public is a charge that was ALREADY in the Criminal Code. There has NOT BEEN A SINGLE CHARGE of sedition or terrorism
With regards to "threat" and "security threat" to the country, ” Such a threat, which is defined in the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act, must consist of “activities within or relating to Canada directed toward or in support of the threat or use of acts of serious violence.” which this inquiry is ever-increasingly discovering this was not the case. There has been no evidence made public that such a threat existed. On the contrary, law enforcement and intelligence officials have repeatedly said, either at the commission or to the government at the time, that the convoy protests did not meet the standards required by the Emergencies Act.
CSIS director David Vigneault warned the federal cabinet before the act was invoked that, “There did not exist a threat to the security of Canada,”
Pat Morris, head of the Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) intelligence unit, who similarly dismissed the idea that the convoy was about to overthrow Canada’s constitutional order. “Everybody was asking about extremism. We weren’t seeing much evidence of it,” he said.
Commissioner Brenda Lucki suggested in a witness statement that police could have resolved the blockades without new powers. She believed, at the time, police had “not exhausted all available tools that are already available through the existing legislation.”
The protest blocking the Windsor-Detroit bridge was ended before the Emergencies Act was invoked, using tried and tested crowd-control techniques. The border blockade in Alberta was also cleared using existing powers.
A few days before the act was invoked, Trudeau told Ontario Premier Doug Ford that, “You shouldn’t need more tools — legal tools.”
Legislation states that a national security threat must include “activities” that are “directed” towards the use of serious violence, the order-in-council invoking the Emergencies Act cited blockades that were “in conjunction with” the threat of violence. That may seem like splitting hairs, but “in conjunction with” simply does not meet the standard laid out in the law.
Other reasons given by the government for invoking the act include economic concerns, which, as serious as they may have been, do not justify emergency powers. More chillingly, the government cited the “potential” for violence as a justification. So much for civil liberties is unbefitting of a government of a mature liberal democracy.
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/justin-trudeaus-emergencies-act-panic
