Juno News - October 27, 2022LAWTON： Should Trudeau resign if Emergencies Act is not justified？
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Summary
Justin Trudeau's government is on trial for invoking the Emergencies act in the wake of the terror attack in Canada's capital, Ottawa, on July 19th, 2019. The Public Order Emergency Commission is investigating the incident, and a grand jury investigation is being opened into the events that took place that day.
Transcript
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Let's talk about where we are with the Public Order Emergency Commission because we've now
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gone through what's today's Wednesday. So we just finished or are finishing soon the 10th day of
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testimony. Now this is midway through week three of a seven week long set of hearings that are
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taking place. And as we spoke about with Keith Wilson on Monday, they could extend this and
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start going on weekends. So we could have many more days of testimony. And if you were looking
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for the smoking gun that the government is going to use to justify and defend its invocation of the
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Emergencies Act, you are sorely disappointed. Sorely disappointed here. And let me explain
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exactly why that is. Because right now we are in the midst of the federal government under
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investigation. It is Justin Trudeau's government on trial. And I don't mean that in a literal sense.
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I don't mean it in a criminal sense. But Justin Trudeau's government is on trial. He himself
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said when parliamentarians were voting on the Emergencies Act, that it was a confidence motion
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because he said, if you don't support the government doing something so drastic, it's proof that that
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government does not deserve to be in power. It's proof that government does not have the confidence
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of the legislature. So the point that I've made in the past is that by Justin Trudeau's own standards,
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this is actually a pretty serious thing. If it's found that he was not justified in invoking the
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Emergencies Act, if at the end of this, Justice Paul Rouleau, the commissioner of the Public Order
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Emergency Commission, says, yeah, the federal government was not justified in doing this,
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I think Justin Trudeau has lost the mandate to govern. And I'm not saying that legally he has lost it.
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I'm saying that morally, politically, he should be gone. So that's what's at stake here. And we have
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heard testimony from residents of Ottawa. We've heard testimony from the police officers at various
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levels, the Ottawa Police Service, the Ontario Provincial Police. We haven't heard, I don't believe,
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from the RCMP just yet. But we've heard OPP and Ottawa Police. We've heard from intelligence.
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We've heard from police liaisons. We've heard from commissioners. We've heard from all sorts of
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people. And what we haven't heard anywhere in that testimony at all is that they requested it.
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So we can completely shatter that narrative that Marco Mendicino and Justin Trudeau and all of those
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have put forward that they were the ones that were just the hapless victims of this. They were the
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passengers. It was the police that wanted the Emergencies Act. Well, what they haven't been able to
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proffer up to us is one single police officer who asked for it. Not one. And Marco Mendicino has
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done this little two-step on this. He said, well, they were asking for the sorts of things that we
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needed the Emergencies Act to do. Now, I should say, in fairness, Marco Mendicino has trouble finding
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two IQ digits to rub together to make a fire. Like, this is not a guy that is exactly like the crown
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prince of the Mensa society here. So I want to be a little bit kind when I talk to him, except he is
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also the guy tasked with Canada's public safety. So perhaps it would be important for the guy who is
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in charge of the public safety division of this country to have a bit more in the sense of, I don't
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know, intelligence or honesty. Like, the reality is Marco Mendicino will eventually become the
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government's fall guy, I think. Like, he doesn't know it yet. I sort of see this, and I think a lot
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of other people see it, that when someone in the government has to be accountable, it's going to
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be, you know, it's not going to be Justin Trudeau. It's going to be Marco Mendicino, and he'll just be
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out there with his, like, I stand with Ukraine sign, just like, furiously trying to scratch it out and
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put, like, you know, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to on it, or whatever he needs to justify saving face.
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But all of this is to say, there has not been a smoking gun from law enforcement,
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from police intelligence, or anything like that, that supports the invocation of the
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Emergencies Act. And I've been listening, we have a whole team at True North that's been following
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this day by day, and I'm just waiting, because police are very dispassionated in their delivery.
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So I'm just waiting for one person to just slip into their testimony. Oh, yes, and there was,
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of course, that violent ring that was, that we broke up. Oh, yeah, of course, there was that
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threat of violence in Ottawa, but it's not there. We've heard confirmation that there were,
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in fact, bouncy castles. So if there was ever any doubt about the bouncy castles,
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we know the bouncy castles for sure were there, and so far, no injuries from the bouncy castles
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have been reported. But it is Justin Trudeau's government on trial, and we cannot let them just
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turn this into whatever Trudeau does when he's caught breaking the rules, if this goes the wrong
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way for him, and that it will be a learning opportunity for all of us.
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No, Canadians already know everything there is to know about this. That's why I think a lot of
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the media hasn't been covering this. And to be fair, media has been reporting on it, but there
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hasn't been the wall-to-wall coverage like, oh, I don't know, the January 6th hearing in the United
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States or the Russia probes in the United States, which I think got far more airtime on Canadian
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television than the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings have so far. And I think that's because
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there's nothing in them that we're really learning about. I mean, even just to look at today's
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program, the title of the show, More Testimony Proves Emergencies Act Was Unnecessary.
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Not going to lie, this is not like a breaking news headline, because this has been the theme that
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has come out of this hearing every single day so far, where police will sometimes say unequivocally
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that they didn't need the Emergencies Act to do what it is that they ended up doing,
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to move in and break up the convoy protest. I'm going to play a clip from OPS, Ottawa Police Service
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Superintendent Robert Bernier, saying, this is the second clip, that he required no additional
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legal authorities to clear protesters from Ottawa.
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You took over as event commander on February 10th. That's what I understand from your evidence
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And your task was to prepare an operational plan?
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And at that time, between February 10th and February 13th, when you were preparing the operational
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plan, was it your assessment that the OPS had the necessary legal tools and powers to execute
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And it was not your assessment that you required any additional legal tools or any additional
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I would say they were beneficial, but to say necessary, I would say no.
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And at no time prior to February 14th, did you communicate to any of your superiors that
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you required additional legal tools or legal powers?
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And if you think there was a gotcha there, when he talks about it being beneficial, you
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should know that that is not what the Emergencies Act is there to assess. It's not about whether
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the government and police made good use of it. The question is whether it was necessary
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and there were no other legal means available to achieve the desired outcome. And every
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single police officer that's come forward that's been asked that question has said that
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it was not necessary. And you look at some of the excuses and rationalizations that will
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come for that. One of them is, of course, going to be the money. We're going to hear from
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Deputy Prime Minister Christopher Freeland later about the bank freezes. And they certainly
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needed the Emergencies Act to freeze the bank accounts, which was, we know, the hallmark
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of their response to the convoy because heaven forbid these truckers get access to donations
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after vaccine mandates have put many of them out to out of work. But they'll also say the
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tow trucks and the tow trucks are going to be so critical because we know that police had
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a hard time finding and the city of Ottawa had a very difficult time finding tow trucks to
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tow away the big rakes because a lot of the tow truck drivers were supporters of the convoy
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themselves. So they're like, yeah, I don't want to do like I'm, I'm on team trucker. I'm
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not going to do that. And even contractors, existing contractors to the city that were
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supposed to make themselves available were saying, I'm not doing this. So the government
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will say, well, we needed to conscript the tow truck drivers. And that was something we
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needed and we needed the Emergencies Act for. Now it's in evidence, and I don't think it's
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all that contentious or contested, that there were difficulties in getting tow trucks there.
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But one of the key details I'd remind you of is that the city of Ottawa had available
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two heavy towing operations, two heavy towing vehicles that belong to the city of Ottawa.
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They belong to Ottawa Transit or OC Transpo, and they have operators and they were under the
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city's direct control and they never used them. That actually came up last week. They never
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used the two that they owned, the two that they actually had access to. So maybe the
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towing shortage wasn't as acute as Ottawa has made it sound. But let's even talk about
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this because this came up in the discussion, the cross-examination by Superintendent Robert
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Bernier, that even then, even with the tow truck issues, they didn't need the Emergencies
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So would you agree that the federal emergency power to compel towing services may have been
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helpful to police and maybe beneficial to police, but it wasn't necessary to enable police to
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Yes. However, with a caveat that we were having challenges, we were having a hard time up until
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that time on the 13th. So prior to the 13th, I would have said we could have used some help
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with that. But as things materialized on the 13th, I was satisfied that we were good.
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And by you were satisfied that we were good, you were satisfied that the federal emergency power to
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Thank you. Interim Chief Bell testified pretty emphatically, and I quote,
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in the absence of the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the OPS, the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a
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unified command, were going to clear the protests. Would you agree with that statement?
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In the absence of the invocation of the Emergencies Act, the OPS, the OPP, the RCMP, as part of a
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unified command, were going to clear the protests. Do you agree with that statement?
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Numerous other OPP and OPS witnesses have testified that federal emergency powers may have been
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helpful to police in various ways, but they were not necessary. Would you agree with that?
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So again, even then, on February 13th, as the Emergencies Act is not yet in play, police are saying,
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yeah, we had a plan. We weren't worried at that time about the absence of tow trucks. We
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seem to be moving forward in the right direction without any issues.