Juno News - Is the stage set for future abuses of the Emergencies Act？

00:00:00.180 Word on the street is Commissioner Paul Rouleau ruled that the federal liberal government was

00:00:04.980 within their right to invoke the Emergencies Act for the first time ever in history to deal with

00:00:10.080 the Freedom Convoy. And I say word on the street because that's what the headline item says,

00:00:14.980 and then you read the actual report, and Rouleau sort of says that. He all right says it. He says

00:00:19.860 he was not ruling that they were not within their right to invoke it, but then you read the details

00:00:23.900 and you're like, well, hold on a second. You don't actually seem all that enthusiastic about all of

00:00:28.720 this, and you put a lot of caveats into your ruling. Rouleau said that he made this decision with

00:00:33.900 reluctance, and he outlined some of the reluctance, talking about basically how, yes, the federal

00:00:39.360 government really felt like they were dealing with a major security issue, and he believed that

00:00:44.480 they felt that they had reasonable grounds to do it, so therefore it was kind of justified in that

00:00:49.500 light. There's a lot of couching of terms in all of that. And you go, okay, fine. So you feel like

00:00:55.080 they got off on a technicality a bit, or it just sort of barely flips over onto their side,

00:01:01.180 so you rule just a little bit in their favor. But isn't the whole point of the Emergencies Act,

00:01:06.120 and we talked about this at great length as a nation, the Prime Minister talked about it,

00:01:09.960 even during the commission it was discussed, that it has to be something of absolute last resort.

00:01:15.100 So the ruling has to be kind of like a slam-dunk victory, where you're like, yeah,

00:01:18.860 they had to do this. I mean, you just had to bring in this Emergencies Act. No possible other

00:01:23.940 way to do it. And yet Rouleau also talking about how, well, you know, it would have been preferable

00:01:28.180 if they found other ways to manage the situation. So we're in this position where, what does all of

00:01:34.560 this mean to not actually get a ringing endorsement? Because something as consequential as bringing in

00:01:39.760 the War Measures Act, and let's be honest, that's what this is. This is the modern-day War Measures

00:01:44.060 Act, because it was reformed into the Emergencies Act for a reason. You've got to get a slam-dunk

00:01:49.620 ruling on all of this. But I'm not sure what happens now, because in the past, during the

00:01:54.280 October crisis in 1970, when the War Measures Act was used, and they said, okay, well, let's

00:01:58.780 investigate whether this was the correct usage, turn it into the Emergencies Act. They went through

00:02:02.540 that whole process to kind of talk about whether or not they needed to change the legislation,

00:02:06.740 and of course they did. We're not going to do this here. If Rouleau had ruled that the federal

00:02:11.900 government was not within the right to invoke the Act, we'd probably have much more of an exercise

00:02:16.400 where we revamped the Act, we get rid of it, something like that. But we're not going to do

00:02:20.660 that here. So this is rather concerning, that a precedent has been set where it's not a slam-dunk

00:02:27.180 victory. It's like, yeah, it's kind of debatable. I'm not sure if they should have done it or not.

00:02:30.660 Okay, fine. I'll say they're within the right to do it. Does this set the stage for future abuses of

00:02:35.980 it? I sure hope not. I hope we're never in this situation again. But with the sort of lukewarm

00:02:40.880 component of Rouleau's ruling, I think that's where we're left.

Juno News - February 21, 2023