People have the right to protest. Trucks, however, are not people and do not enjoy the rights people do.
Justice Paul Rouleau did not say as much, but, in effect, he made that point.
Rouleau headed the commission which looked into the federal government’s unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act, a year ago, to end the truckers’ convoy occupation of Ottawa, and its disruptive activities elsewhere in the country.
That commission tabled its final report last week, and what they have to say is worth reading.
The document covers a lot of territory.
It deals with: multiple and repeated policing failures; the Ontario government’s abdication of responsibility; the nature and character of the protests; the impact on the lives of citizens who lived in what became, effectively, occupied territory; and much more.
Impact on Ottawa residents was significant
Rouleau concluded that the federal government was justified in using the 1988 Emergencies Act because the convoy, in its various forms and manifestations, presented a real threat to the security of Canada.
During its hearings the commission gave generous time and space to the protesters – far more, in fact, than it did to the tens of thousands of affected Ottawa residents.
Convoy leaders repeatedly claimed they were only involved in a legal, peaceful protest.
But Rouleau didn’t buy their claim.
His report detailed many facts which belie the notion this was nothing more than a non-violent, respectful expression of political dissent.
For instance, Rouleau cited the convoy’s impact on Ottawa residents.
“Many [Ottawa residents] experienced negative effects on their physical and psychological health and were legitimately concerned for their personal safety,” Rouleau wrote. “The fire hazards caused by open fires, wood piles, propane tanks, and jerry cans of fuel were constant. Street obstructions impeded access to critical public and emergency services. There were multiple reports of harassment, intimidation, and assaultive behaviour, to which law enforcement was often unable to respond.”
Rouleau had earlier explained in detail the utter failure of the Ottawa police and their Ontario Provincial Police colleagues to anticipate and prepare for what the convoy-ers planned to do.
The commission report stated bluntly that once what became the occupation got underway in earnest the police were “overwhelmed and unable to enforce basic laws.”
Those basic laws included parking, idling and noise-making regulations.
The report referred to residents enduring “prolonged exposure to diesel fumes and excessive noise from air and train horns,” and added that “many of these effects had a particularly strong impact on vulnerable individuals.”
All of these conditions, made possible in large measure by an overwhelmed police force, “created a safety risk”.
In addition, Rouleau mentioned the convoy-ers’ intimidation of tow-truck drivers, the fact that residents of besieged Coutts Alberta near the U.S. border were unable to travel to get food and medicines, and the presence of children at many protest sites.
The thousands of tractor trailers, 18-wheelers and other giant vehicles the protesters mobilized were potential weapons, but the authorities also had well-founded fears of other, more conventionally lethal weapons.
The RCMP discovered a large cache of weapons at Coutts, which, Rouleau said, raised the possibility of injury.
“The recent known presence of weapons at the site of a protest, together with the inflammatory provocation expressed by protest supporters, increased concerns that bad actors such as had been discovered at Coutts might be present within, or might join, other protests.”
It was based on those facts that Rouleau concluded, however reluctantly, it was necessary for the federal government to resort to the Emergencies Act.
Some progressives worry about the precedent
In reacting to the report Conservatives mostly ignored its findings and blamed the whole affair on Justin Trudeau.
The prime minister should not have willfully divided Canadians with his rhetoric, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre said.
He added that Trudeau was reckless when he used COVID measures, such as vaccines, as a political wedge issue during the 2021 election campaign.
That’s pretty much all we can expect to hear from Poilievre on the subject. He would rather excoriate the Liberals for the depredations of inflation than remind Canadians how he had enthusiastically welcomed the convoy when it first arrived in Ottawa.
On the progressive, pro-human-rights side of the political field there are still some who fear this first-ever use of the Emergencies Act will set a bad precedent.
While the federal New Democrats in Parliament supported the invocation of the Act from the outset, some prominent NDPers, notably Svend Robinson, did not.
Neither did the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, which is still pursuing a court case against what they say is the government’s unjustified use of the vast, unchecked powers conferred by the Act.
Folks in that camp worry deeply about what might happen in the future.
While it is true, they admit, the Trudeau government was measured and respectful in the way it exercised its extraordinary powers, we cannot guarantee a future government will be so constrained.
They ask: What will those who applauded this marshalling of state power say when such power is used against Indigenous people or workers with legitimate grievances?
It’s a fair question. Those worriers have genuine reasons to worry.
The counter argument is that, in this case, one had to choose one’s poison. There was no perfect option.
The federal government could have chosen to stand by and acquiesce in a populist right-wing mob taking control of the heart of the capital – aided and abetted by their respectable friends in parliament and in the media.
We saw that on January 6 2021 in Washington, D.C. As outgoing president Donald Trump was assembling his mob, his political acolytes in Congress were rallying to the cause in their own way.
Missouri Senator Josh Hawley shook his fist in support at the gathering crowd, as he went into the Capitol Building. Later that same day, video would capture Hawley running for cover.
Alabama congressman Mo Brooks went further. He gave an inflammatory speech to the mob, where he shouted: “This is the day when we take names and kick ass!”
In other times and other places an unholy alliance of the political and business Right and the street fighting Right has succeeded in overthrowing democracy altogether.
Admittedly, we were far from that prospect last winter in Canada.
But we were not dealing with a case of Gandhian passive resistance either. We were faced with the sort of bullying movement that thrives and grows when the response they face is weakness and vacillation – which is what happened here in Canada for several weeks in 2022.
The precedent of allowing such a phenomenon to persist would likely have been worse than the precedent of employing the vast – but not unlimited – powers of the Emergencies Act.
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