Chris Lange, FISM News
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has ended emergency police powers he invoked to end the three-weeks long trucker protest that shut down parts of the U.S.-Canadian border.
“Today, after careful consideration, we’re ending the use of the Emergencies Act. Existing laws and local law enforcement authorities can keep people safe, and we’ll continue being there to support provincial and local authorities to protect Canadians.” Trudeau tweeted Wednesday.
“The situation is no longer an emergency, therefore the federal government will be ending the use of the Emergencies Act,” Trudeau said at a news conference. “We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe,” he continued, adding that most of the emergency powers would be formally revoked with a proclamation signed by Canada’s governor general.
Separately, the province of Ontario announced that it was terminating a state of emergency declared earlier this month to respond to the protests.
Trudeau maintains that he had no choice but to invoke the act because the blockades were hurting Canada’s economy and putting public safety at risk.
When we invoked the Emergencies Act on Monday of last week, we had three principles in mind: restoring peace and order, making sure the measures were proportionate and compliant with the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and making sure it was time-limited.
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) February 24, 2022
The House of Commons on Monday approved the Emergencies Act that resulted in a harsh police crackdown on protesters assembled in downtown Ottawa and several ports of entry between Canada and the U.S. over the weekend. Officers unleashed tear gas and a barrage of non-lethal projectiles on demonstrators Sunday, affected nearly 200 arrests, and impounded multiple vehicles involved in the protest. The Canadian government also froze the bank accounts of 200 private citizens and a combined $8 million linked to the demonstrations across the country. The Canadian government began lifting freezes on those accounts Tuesday.
Conservative Party members and some provincial leaders objected to the unprecedented use of the rare powers, declaring them to be an unnecessary government overreach. It was unlikely that the Senate would have approved the Emergency Act, leading to speculation that Trudeau sought to save face ahead of the Senate vote with his announcement.
“Trudeau backs down,” tweeted Conservative lawmaker Pierre Poilievre in response to the Prime Minister’s announcement. “Thank you to all who fought this abuse of power.”
While news that emergency powers will be pulled back was likely a relief to Canadian citizens who lost access to their private bank accounts and found themselves stripped of their only means of transportation, Trudeau won’t be relinquishing all of his newly-found power. During Wednesday’s presser, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said the government plans to make a portion of the powers permanent, with a focus on cracking down on crowdfunding sites like GiveSendGo and GoFundMe, both of which were used as sources of funding for Freedom Convoy protesters who never saw a dime of the money after GoFundMe froze their account and GiveSendGo was hacked by an unknown assailant.
Canadians, meanwhile, received news that the Emergencies Act had ended with mixed reactions.
Guess what? The Canadian Conservative Party stood strong against him. The Political Parties that sided with him own this now.
— Pasquinal (@NASM106) February 24, 2022
The Prime Minister showed Canadians the fools that are the Conservative Party of Canada. Dysfunctional incompetents screaming for both sides of an argument. Your party shamelessly supported a coup on our democracy. The Cons sided with racist thugs over the citizens of Ottawa.
— Tim (@TimEastCoast) February 24, 2022
A recent poll conducted by Canada’s left-leaning Global News found that 43% of Canadians approve of the way Trudeau handled the Freedom Convoy protests while 36% supported the way the truckers handled themselves.
Mainstreet Research on Monday released findings from their own poll showing that voter support for Canada’s Conservative Party (CPC) of Canada jumped 10 percentage points in the past month, with 36% saying they would vote for the CPC and only 28% for the Liberal Party of Canada.
The Freedom Convoy protests began as an opposition to a cross-border COVID-19 vaccine mandate for truck drivers but soon turned into a broader demonstration against Trudeau’s minority Liberal government. Washington D.C. police and lawmakers on Capitol Hill, meanwhile, are bracing for a similar trucker demonstration said to be in the works, with organizers saying they plan to converge on the Capital Beltway this week.