With the lift of the Emergencies Act, which was invoked for the first time in Canadian history on February 14, 2022, comes many thoughts, concerns, and criticisms.
Replacing the War Measures Act in the 1980s, the Emergencies Act was set in place to deal with national emergencies efficiently through the granting of additional and “temporary powers” to the federal government when the provincial government is not adequate enough to address the issue effectively.
In this case, this unprecedented action was to tackle the continuous protests and blockades in Ottawa, according to CBC. The Act enabled police to restore order with additional powers, along with the RCMP being allowed to “enforce municipal bylaws and provincial offences” when needed.
Professor Allan Hutchinson at Osgoode Hall Law School, whose research has been dedicated to politics, constitutional law, and civil procedure speaks with Excalibur regarding the Emergencies Act, its effectiveness, and the impact of the recent outcomes.
“There’s a lot to say — obviously they have now suspended the powers under the Emergencies Act and they were brought into effect by the government. There’s a lot of discussion as to whether they should have done it — whether the conditions of The Act have been met. I think this is a close call,” Hutchinson says.
“In this case, it was a public order emergency, and they had to show, in particular, that they could not have dealt with the situation with the existing powers that they had under the Constitution,” Hutchinson continues.
Could the same results have been achieved without the Emergencies Act being invoked?
“One of my colleagues said ‘but they did have those powers and they could have done all of this without invoking the Emergencies Act.’ My response is, maybe that’s true, but I am not so sure it was necessarily worthwhile to discuss that. One of the things that people don’t understand, and needs to be clarified is, in general, issues like protest, law and order, are the responsibility of the province,” Hutchinson states.
“The federal government does not have any particular power to deal with those matters. Therefore, the Emergencies Powers Act was introduced following the War Measures Act to say in certain emergencies that it would be important that the federal government would have power itself to step in and not just leave it to the provincial government to act.”
Did invoking the Emergencies Act prove to have been effective? Did the government achieve the desired goal?
“I think the federal government wanted to act and clear the street and to also impose sanctions upon the protesters. I think they were fairly effective in doing that. Question might be ‘could they have done that with the powers they had?.’ The government was saying that we are not going to wait for a discussion on that, we are just going to get on with the job, and I think they did a reasonable job.”
“There’s a lot of discussion on why they didn’t do it sooner. So, there is less about whether they were over-reaching their powers, but also about whether they actually could have avoided all this by acting from the beginning. Hindsight is always easy after the events have occurred,” Hutchinson explains.
Could there be further backlash from the convoy despite the arrests made?
“It’s always hard looking in the future, but I don’t think we are done with these kinds of events. I think there might be a lull before anything else happens, but I think that we will likely face this again.”
Finally, with the loosening of restrictions, did the supporters of the convoy get what they wanted?
“No. I’m not sure there was a connection between the two. I think people have been charged, some have been imprisoned, and they can obviously spin a story saying that there would have been no listing of the lockdown without them. I don’t think that’s a true story, but people obviously create history in the way they want to. Which is unfortunate, but they do,” Hutchinson ends off.
