Juno News - October 27, 2022


LAWTON： Should Trudeau resign if Emergencies Act is not justified？


Episode Stats

Length

11 minutes

Words per Minute

173.66301

Word Count

1,983

Sentence Count

103


Summary


Transcript

00:00:00.000 Let's talk about where we are with the Public Order Emergency Commission because we've now
00:00:04.020 gone through what's today's Wednesday. So we just finished or are finishing soon the 10th day of
00:00:10.740 testimony. Now this is midway through week three of a seven week long set of hearings that are
00:00:18.220 taking place. And as we spoke about with Keith Wilson on Monday, they could extend this and
00:00:22.060 start going on weekends. So we could have many more days of testimony. And if you were looking
00:00:27.940 for the smoking gun that the government is going to use to justify and defend its invocation of the
00:00:35.460 Emergencies Act, you are sorely disappointed. Sorely disappointed here. And let me explain
00:00:42.020 exactly why that is. Because right now we are in the midst of the federal government under
00:00:48.840 investigation. It is Justin Trudeau's government on trial. And I don't mean that in a literal sense.
00:00:54.860 I don't mean it in a criminal sense. But Justin Trudeau's government is on trial. He himself
00:00:59.940 said when parliamentarians were voting on the Emergencies Act, that it was a confidence motion
00:01:06.060 because he said, if you don't support the government doing something so drastic, it's proof that that
00:01:11.240 government does not deserve to be in power. It's proof that government does not have the confidence
00:01:16.660 of the legislature. So the point that I've made in the past is that by Justin Trudeau's own standards,
00:01:22.680 this is actually a pretty serious thing. If it's found that he was not justified in invoking the
00:01:31.000 Emergencies Act, if at the end of this, Justice Paul Rouleau, the commissioner of the Public Order
00:01:35.940 Emergency Commission, says, yeah, the federal government was not justified in doing this,
00:01:40.840 I think Justin Trudeau has lost the mandate to govern. And I'm not saying that legally he has lost it.
00:01:46.560 I'm saying that morally, politically, he should be gone. So that's what's at stake here. And we have
00:01:54.760 heard testimony from residents of Ottawa. We've heard testimony from the police officers at various
00:02:01.620 levels, the Ottawa Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police. We haven't heard, I don't believe,
00:02:06.920 from the RCMP just yet. But we've heard OPP and Ottawa Police. We've heard from intelligence.
00:02:12.080 We've heard from police liaisons. We've heard from commissioners. We've heard from all sorts of
00:02:17.380 people. And what we haven't heard anywhere in that testimony at all is that they requested it.
00:02:24.560 So we can completely shatter that narrative that Marco Mendicino and Justin Trudeau and all of those
00:02:30.440 have put forward that they were the ones that were just the hapless victims of this. They were the
00:02:35.280 passengers. It was the police that wanted the Emergencies Act. Well, what they haven't been able to
00:02:39.700 proffer up to us is one single police officer who asked for it. Not one. And Marco Mendicino has
00:02:47.020 done this little two-step on this. He said, well, they were asking for the sorts of things that we
00:02:51.880 needed the Emergencies Act to do. Now, I should say, in fairness, Marco Mendicino has trouble finding
00:02:58.680 two IQ digits to rub together to make a fire. Like, this is not a guy that is exactly like the crown
00:03:05.100 prince of the Mensa society here. So I want to be a little bit kind when I talk to him, except he is
00:03:10.800 also the guy tasked with Canada's public safety. So perhaps it would be important for the guy who is
00:03:16.700 in charge of the public safety division of this country to have a bit more in the sense of, I don't
00:03:22.780 know, intelligence or honesty. Like, the reality is Marco Mendicino will eventually become the
00:03:29.660 government's fall guy, I think. Like, he doesn't know it yet. I sort of see this, and I think a lot
00:03:35.180 of other people see it, that when someone in the government has to be accountable, it's going to
00:03:39.160 be, you know, it's not going to be Justin Trudeau. It's going to be Marco Mendicino, and he'll just be
00:03:43.260 out there with his, like, I stand with Ukraine sign, just like, furiously trying to scratch it out and
00:03:47.200 put, like, you know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to on it, or whatever he needs to justify saving face.
00:03:53.700 But all of this is to say, there has not been a smoking gun from law enforcement,
00:03:57.600 from police intelligence, or anything like that, that supports the invocation of the
00:04:04.000 Emergencies Act. And I've been listening, we have a whole team at True North that's been following
00:04:08.020 this day by day, and I'm just waiting, because police are very dispassionated in their delivery.
00:04:13.060 So I'm just waiting for one person to just slip into their testimony. Oh, yes, and there was,
00:04:17.620 of course, that violent ring that was, that we broke up. Oh, yeah, of course, there was that
00:04:21.460 threat of violence in Ottawa, but it's not there. We've heard confirmation that there were,
00:04:26.000 in fact, bouncy castles. So if there was ever any doubt about the bouncy castles,
00:04:30.140 we know the bouncy castles for sure were there, and so far, no injuries from the bouncy castles
00:04:35.660 have been reported. But it is Justin Trudeau's government on trial, and we cannot let them just
00:04:43.180 turn this into whatever Trudeau does when he's caught breaking the rules, if this goes the wrong
00:04:48.300 way for him, and that it will be a learning opportunity for all of us.
00:04:52.000 No, Canadians already know everything there is to know about this. That's why I think a lot of
00:04:58.000 the media hasn't been covering this. And to be fair, media has been reporting on it, but there
00:05:02.860 hasn't been the wall-to-wall coverage like, oh, I don't know, the January 6th hearing in the United
00:05:08.080 States or the Russia probes in the United States, which I think got far more airtime on Canadian
00:05:14.060 television than the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings have so far. And I think that's because
00:05:20.640 there's nothing in them that we're really learning about. I mean, even just to look at today's
00:05:25.640 program, the title of the show, More Testimony Proves Emergencies Act Was Unnecessary.
00:05:31.900 Not going to lie, this is not like a breaking news headline, because this has been the theme that
00:05:36.140 has come out of this hearing every single day so far, where police will sometimes say unequivocally
00:05:42.540 that they didn't need the Emergencies Act to do what it is that they ended up doing,
00:05:48.300 to move in and break up the convoy protest. I'm going to play a clip from OPS, Ottawa Police Service
00:05:54.840 Superintendent Robert Bernier, saying, this is the second clip, that he required no additional
00:06:01.880 legal authorities to clear protesters from Ottawa.
00:06:05.240 You took over as event commander on February 10th. That's what I understand from your evidence
00:06:10.180 today?
00:06:11.240 Yes.
00:06:12.260 And your task was to prepare an operational plan?
00:06:16.100 Yes.
00:06:17.740 And at that time, between February 10th and February 13th, when you were preparing the operational
00:06:24.020 plan, was it your assessment that the OPS had the necessary legal tools and powers to execute
00:06:32.420 that operational plan?
00:06:33.420 Yes.
00:06:34.420 And it was not your assessment that you required any additional legal tools or any additional
00:06:41.960 legal powers?
00:06:42.660 I would say they were beneficial, but to say necessary, I would say no.
00:06:51.320 And at no time prior to February 14th, did you communicate to any of your superiors that
00:06:58.500 you required additional legal tools or legal powers?
00:07:02.700 That is correct.
00:07:04.140 And if you think there was a gotcha there, when he talks about it being beneficial, you
00:07:08.200 should know that that is not what the Emergencies Act is there to assess. It's not about whether
00:07:13.420 the government and police made good use of it. The question is whether it was necessary
00:07:19.120 and there were no other legal means available to achieve the desired outcome. And every
00:07:24.600 single police officer that's come forward that's been asked that question has said that
00:07:28.940 it was not necessary. And you look at some of the excuses and rationalizations that will
00:07:35.760 come for that. One of them is, of course, going to be the money. We're going to hear from
00:07:39.460 Deputy Prime Minister Christopher Freeland later about the bank freezes. And they certainly
00:07:43.660 needed the Emergencies Act to freeze the bank accounts, which was, we know, the hallmark
00:07:48.480 of their response to the convoy because heaven forbid these truckers get access to donations
00:07:53.780 after vaccine mandates have put many of them out to out of work. But they'll also say the
00:07:59.860 tow trucks and the tow trucks are going to be so critical because we know that police had
00:08:05.160 a hard time finding and the city of Ottawa had a very difficult time finding tow trucks to
00:08:10.120 tow away the big rakes because a lot of the tow truck drivers were supporters of the convoy
00:08:15.500 themselves. So they're like, yeah, I don't want to do like I'm, I'm on team trucker. I'm
00:08:19.740 not going to do that. And even contractors, existing contractors to the city that were
00:08:25.080 supposed to make themselves available were saying, I'm not doing this. So the government
00:08:29.580 will say, well, we needed to conscript the tow truck drivers. And that was something we
00:08:35.220 needed and we needed the Emergencies Act for. Now it's in evidence, and I don't think it's
00:08:39.720 all that contentious or contested, that there were difficulties in getting tow trucks there.
00:08:47.080 But one of the key details I'd remind you of is that the city of Ottawa had available
00:08:51.100 two heavy towing operations, two heavy towing vehicles that belong to the city of Ottawa.
00:08:57.760 They belong to Ottawa Transit or OC Transpo, and they have operators and they were under the
00:09:03.280 city's direct control and they never used them. That actually came up last week. They never
00:09:07.780 used the two that they owned, the two that they actually had access to. So maybe the
00:09:12.720 towing shortage wasn't as acute as Ottawa has made it sound. But let's even talk about
00:09:18.120 this because this came up in the discussion, the cross-examination by Superintendent Robert
00:09:23.340 Bernier, that even then, even with the tow truck issues, they didn't need the Emergencies
00:09:29.540 Act. Take a look.
00:09:31.320 So would you agree that the federal emergency power to compel towing services may have been
00:09:36.180 helpful to police and maybe beneficial to police, but it wasn't necessary to enable police to
00:09:42.280 clear the protests, was it?
00:09:45.460 Yes. However, with a caveat that we were having challenges, we were having a hard time up until
00:09:55.120 that time on the 13th. So prior to the 13th, I would have said we could have used some help
00:10:01.320 with that. But as things materialized on the 13th, I was satisfied that we were good.
00:10:08.860 And by you were satisfied that we were good, you were satisfied that the federal emergency power to
00:10:15.620 compel tow trucks wasn't necessary?
00:10:18.440 Correct.
00:10:19.260 Thank you. Interim Chief Bell testified pretty emphatically, and I quote,
00:10:24.480 in the absence of the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the OPS, the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a
00:10:32.640 unified command, were going to clear the protests. Would you agree with that statement?
00:10:36.760 Could you repeat that question again, please?
00:10:39.080 In the absence of the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the OPS, the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a
00:10:48.200 unified command, were going to clear the protests. Do you agree with that statement?
00:10:52.220 Yes.
00:10:53.600 Numerous other OPP and OPS witnesses have testified that federal emergency powers may have been
00:10:58.940 helpful to police in various ways, but they were not necessary. Would you agree with that?
00:11:03.520 Yes.
00:11:04.160 Thank you very much. Those are my questions.
00:11:06.620 So again, even then, on February 13th, as the Emergencies Act is not yet in play, police are saying,
00:11:14.920 yeah, we had a plan. We weren't worried at that time about the absence of tow trucks. We
00:11:19.840 seem to be moving forward in the right direction without any issues.