Rupa Subramanya: Ludicrous to call the Freedom Convoy an occupation
The protesters didn’t come from Mars, or from anywhere outside Canada Author of the article: Rupa Subramanya
(National Post, Oct 28, 2022)
Article content
As the second full week of hearings by the Public Order Emergency Commission winds down, it’s becoming increasingly clear just how weak the government’s rationale appears to be for invoking the Emergencies Act. As I wrote last week, key witnesses, including the OPP’s intelligence chief Supt. Pat Morris, shredded the federal narrative that the protesters were a violent and dangerous fringe who posed an imminent threat to the nation’s capital. Morris’s point of view was reconfirmed by OPP Commissioner Thomas Carrique, who asserted categorically that there was no “credible threat” to national security posed by the Freedom Convoy.
Echoing the OPP, Ottawa Police Service incident commander Supt. Robert Bernier made clear that the Emergencies Act was not required for the police to do their job. Added to this, interim Ottawa police chief Steve Bell said that while the emergency powers were “helpful,” they were not “needed” for the police, the OPP and the RCMP as part of their unified command to do their job.
The NP Comment newsletter from columnist Colby Cosh and NP Comment editors tackles the important topics with boldness, verve and wit. Get NP Platformed delivered to your inbox weekdays by 4 p.m. ET. Email Address By clicking on the sign up button you consent to receive the above newsletter from Postmedia Network Inc. You may unsubscribe any time by clicking on the unsubscribe link at the bottom of our emails. Postmedia Network Inc. | 365 Bloor Street East, Toronto, Ontario, M4W 3L4 | 416-383-2300
It’s obvious that emergency powers being helpful is not an adequate criterion to invoke them, and it’s going to be very hard for the government to make a convincing case that there was no viable alternative except imposing an emergency. Presumably, the last straw for the government to grasp at is that they had lost faith in the ability of the Ottawa Police, something suggested in a text message exchange now made public between Carrique and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, who apparently relayed the government’s lack of faith to Carrique.
Leave the police aside — there’s ample reason to have little faith in Ottawa’s outgoing mayor, Jim Watson. One of his more outlandish suggestions after the protests had already been cleared was that protesters’ vehicles that had been seized be sold and the proceeds used for policing costs. City solicitor David White, in a memo that since been made public, shot down the idea, saying the city had no legal authority to permanently seize vehicles in such a manner. The fact that Watson, the mayor of a G7 capital, was apparently unaware of this and was proposing tactics that you would more usually find in a banana republic is flabbergasting and scary. Yet, this is of a piece with the federal government’s freezing of the bank accounts not just of the protesters but those who gave them a few dollars of support online.
Equally disturbing was some of Chief Bell’s verbiage during his testimony to the commission of inquiry. He repeatedly referred to the protests as an “occupation” and the protesters as “occupiers,” terms widely used by critics and opponents of the protests. Such terms are clearly intended to delegitimize what was in fact a peaceful disobedience movement, of a type that Canada or Ottawa has not seen much of, but which is common around the world, including in our neighbour to the south.
Likewise, when challenged under cross examination by Convoy lawyer Brendan Miller, Bell, who repeatedly invoked “violence” being done to city residents, conceded that his use of the term did not refer to actual violence as defined by the Criminal Code but a violence that was “felt” by Ottawa residents. Again, such an assertion might possibly make sense coming from a psychiatrist or a psychological counsellor, but seems rather bizarre coming from the chief of police, whose day job is enforcing the law, not psychologizing what some residents may or may not have felt.
If the rest of the hearings go like this, it’s hard to believe an impartial commission could conclude otherwise than the government failed to make its case for the invocation of the Emergencies Act. However, the Liberals have their waiting saviour in the NDP and Jagmeet Singh. Singh has said, while the inquiry is in progress, that even if the commission finds fault with the government, his party won’t pull the plug on Trudeau’s minority, thus propping them up until their term expires in 2025. Rationalize it however Singh may, this is nothing other than the most cynical political calculus, since an early election is likely to prove ruinous to the veto that a party unlikely to ever form a government has over the current governing party.
In the ultimate analysis, the narrative tone was set from the outset by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and it continues to this day. Commenting on the actions of Ontario Premier Doug Ford, Trudeau praised Ford for “standing with the people of Ottawa, of Ontario and of Canada, and not others.” Unless the prime minister believes, contrary to the evidence, that members of the Freedom Convoy came from Mars, or at any rate from outside Canada, he’s quite literally “othering” fellow Canadians. Trudeau is no longer even bothering with the pretence that he governs for all Canadians, and not just the minority (not even a plurality) who voted for him.