Juno News - April 26, 2022


Trudeau calls inquiry into his invocation of the Emergencies Act

Hosted by
Andrew Lawton
Mentioned
Kara Zwiebel John Brennan Marco Mendicino Justin Trudeau Bill Blair Bridge Crossing Candace Malcolm Kate Harrison Jamil Giovanni Speaker Michael Schellenberger Preston Manning Candace Bergen Stephen Harper Andrew Scheer Paul Rouleau Eric Duhem Paul Brulot Mike Harris Robbie Suave and 3 more
The Charter didn’t stop Canada’s Covid slide towards tyranny Standing up against the corporate media’s social justice agenda (Ft. Jamil Jivani)

Episode Stats


Length

37 minutes

Words per minute

171.68

Word count

6,392

Sentence count

271


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

On today's show, Andrew Lawton talks about the government's decision to launch an investigation into the use of the Emergencies Act in response to the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the United States, and why he thinks it's a bad idea.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.
00:00:30.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:00:58.380 This is The Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.
00:01:05.800 Hello and welcome to another live edition of Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.
00:01:11.340 This is The Andrew Lawton Show on True North.
00:01:14.100 It is, I think, Tuesday. Yeah, my calendar's saying it's April 26th, 4 p.m. Eastern Time,
00:01:19.240 which makes it 5 p.m. in Halifax, 5.30 in Newfoundland, I think 1 o'clock on Vancouver Island,
00:01:26.400 2 o'clock in the great province of Alberta where I just was over the weekend and I have no idea
00:01:32.120 what time it is in Saskatchewan you guys do that weird day I think you're only an hour behind in
00:01:36.960 when daylight savings but I always get mixed up because Saskatchewan decides to do its own thing
00:01:41.880 on daylight savings where the rest of us have to change our calendar so I think they're I think
00:01:46.460 they're on basically central time now so if you're in Moose Jaw or Regina let me know I think it's
00:01:51.920 about three o'clock your time if you're listening in the podcast you just wonder why I've wasted
00:01:56.140 90 seconds of your life that you'll never get back telling you the times of places when it's
00:02:00.840 not those times now. So I'm going to move on. But thanks to all of you for tuning in to the
00:02:05.580 program. It's a big day in Canada. We're going to be talking about the Emergencies Act review,
00:02:11.220 the inquiry that the Liberal government has finally decided to launch on the very last day
00:02:17.300 it could, 60 days afterwards. And they're not really focused on assessing their own actions
00:02:23.400 and their own conduct.
00:02:25.240 And we're going to be speaking about this shortly
00:02:26.740 with two fantastic lawyers on this,
00:02:28.780 Joanna Barron of the Canadian Constitution Foundation
00:02:31.800 and Kara Zwiebel of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association,
00:02:35.460 both of whom have legal challenges afoot
00:02:37.800 against the Emergencies Act.
00:02:40.280 But I want to read Justin Trudeau's announcement
00:02:42.780 because the whole point of it is that the Emergencies Act
00:02:45.260 is an emergency measures act.
00:02:48.060 It's a war measures act, basically.
00:02:49.780 It's a bill that replaced the War Measures Act,
00:02:52.520 which hasn't been invoked since 1972, I think it was. And the thing about that, and people
00:02:59.100 fail to realize this, the Pierre Trudeau War Measures Act invocation over the FLQ crisis
00:03:05.780 was controversial and remains to this day controversial. And in that case, two people
00:03:13.100 had been kidnapped, there had been bombings, there had been a political assassination,
00:03:17.040 and that was deemed controversial. This one was over bouncy castles, pig roasts, saunas,
00:03:26.200 and honking of truck horns. So even if the bill has changed, we're talking about the most severe
00:03:34.380 emergency legislation imaginable to Canada right now within the realm of what is legal in Canada.
00:03:41.040 And I think there needs to be a very robust inquiry, not just because the law says there
00:03:45.340 must be, but because we as a country deserve to know what evidence the government had to justify
00:03:50.400 this emergency. So that's the angle that I go into this with. But here's what Justin Trudeau said.
00:03:57.780 The commission will examine the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued and the
00:04:04.240 measures taken in response to the emergency. This includes the evolution of the convoy,
00:04:09.460 the impact of funding and disinformation, the economic impact and efforts of police and other
00:04:16.380 responders prior to and after the declaration. Did you catch that? So what they're saying is
00:04:23.420 that they're going to be more focused on the convoy when the emergency measures inquiry is
00:04:29.560 supposed to be into the government and into the Emergencies Act and how the government applied
00:04:34.760 that. So this is why I think the government is trying to cover its own behind here, not have a
00:04:41.960 genuine introspection into how it went about this. A bill that allowed, or not a bill, but an order
00:04:48.300 in council that allowed the government, allowed the government to suspend civil liberties while
00:04:53.520 claiming they were not doing that. I should have pulled the clip for today's show. Justin Trudeau
00:04:58.340 saying on a number of occasions, oh no, this is not affecting civil liberties. Everything's going
00:05:02.860 to be subject to the charter and all that. Meanwhile, reporters, yours truly, were being
00:05:07.820 pepper sprayed. And more acutely, reporters were being denied the right to walk down a street
00:05:14.300 without being threatened with arrest by police. That is not civil liberties being intact. Not at
00:05:22.780 all. So this is going to be an exercise in the government effectively covering, covering itself,
00:05:30.400 concocting whatever excuses it can come up with to say that what it did was defensible
00:05:35.420 when the more we learn about it, the less defensible this looks.
00:05:39.540 Bill Blair, who was previously the public safety minister, I forget his exact title now,
00:05:44.520 I think he's just the emergency preparedness minister now, was asked in the House of Commons
00:05:48.860 about this yesterday, and he was asked specifically if the government would give the inquiry access
00:05:55.180 to confidential and secret documents, specifically cabinet documents.
00:06:00.700 And this is what Bill Blair said.
00:06:04.160 When this country was faced with very real threats to critical infrastructure,
00:06:09.120 our vital supply lines, and the incredible disruption that was taking place right out here in the streets of Ottawa,
00:06:14.120 our government did what was necessary and required to deal with that situation through the invocation of the Act.
00:06:20.640 Mr. Speaker, and today I want to advise this House that today the government is fulfilling its statutory requirements in appointing Justice Paul Brulot as the commissioner of the public inquiry into the circumstances of this act.
00:06:36.760 Mr. Speaker, we will do what is required and we will do it in the right way.
00:06:42.620 A public inquiry into the circumstances of the act.
00:06:46.720 Now, I never want to make the mistake of assuming that Bill Blair knows what he's talking about, so I'm not going to focus too, too much on individual words, but again, it does sound like he's saying exactly what Trudeau was saying, which is that they're more interested in making this an inquiry into the convoy, which is not supposed to be what it is.
00:07:04.900 I want to play another clip of Marco Mendocino. He is the public safety minister now. And why
00:07:11.540 Marco Mendocino is relevant here is because when the Emergencies Act was put in place,
00:07:16.100 initially, he gave this press conference that I covered and I played the clip of on this show.
00:07:20.880 And it was a long clip. I didn't play the whole thing on the show, but I posted it online if you
00:07:25.180 want to go and look it up. I think it was like five and a half, six minutes long. And at first
00:07:29.340 he said that there was evidence connecting a violent cell that wanted to commit acts of
00:07:34.140 violence in Ottawa and overthrow the government, and that this was tied to the convoy in Ottawa.
00:07:39.560 And he made a very clear and a very decisive proclamation of this. And to their credit,
00:07:44.900 reporters there asked him to pony up the evidence and said, what do you mean by this?
00:07:49.000 What are you talking about? What group? What plot? What violence? And it took like four or five times
00:07:54.320 asking the question before he finally walked it back. And not only did he walk it back, but he
00:07:59.640 walked it back to such a point where it was unrecognizable. And he said, well, he's seen
00:08:05.340 things on Twitter that, you know, were a bit concerning. So he went from a conspiracy to
00:08:10.940 overthrow the government with violent force to I saw mean tweets. And you may think this is just
00:08:17.420 a little gaffe or something you can poke fun at him over, a little thing that's just amusing. Oh,
00:08:22.200 yeah, the minister that fumbled his words. But it's very significant because you're talking about
00:08:26.640 governments that are prepared to be brazenly dishonest, simply to justify and to rationalize
00:08:34.060 their invocation of this act. And he still has not put forward any evidence. Let's play
00:08:39.160 the clip of Marco Mendicino talking about the Emergencies Act specifically.
00:08:45.760 Minister Mendicino, I think I'm wrong. It was overreached to invoke the act. And would you do
00:08:51.060 it again, like considering for this weekend the Rolling Thunder protest? Would you use this tool
00:08:54.820 again? Well, I think we can be unequivocally clear about a number of things looking back
00:08:59.980 in the events of January and February of this year. One, the incredible and devastating
00:09:07.160 damage that was done to public safety at ports of entry in the form of interruption to trade
00:09:15.140 and travel, the interruption to supply chains, including with regards to vital health supplies,
00:09:22.920 which Canadians needed on a daily basis, the disruption to public safety in our communities,
00:09:30.600 in our neighborhoods, and the unique and unprecedented challenges that these illegal
00:09:36.440 occupations and blockades posed. And it was only after very careful consideration on the advice of
00:09:46.680 professional non-partisan branches of law enforcement that we invoked the emergencies act
00:09:54.040 it was a necessary decision it was a responsible decision it was the right thing to do and we are
00:10:00.520 certainly looking forward to cooperating with justice rouleau in the context of this public
00:10:05.640 inquiry so that he has the fulsome record as well as the joint parliamentary committee which is uh
00:10:11.480 looking at this at the same time so the follow-up question there he was asked just
00:10:21.560 so to point this out because i thought we had the clip there was whether the inquiry the judge
00:10:26.840 presiding over would have access to cabinet documents and his response says the inquiry
00:10:32.360 will have access to a broad array of confidential documents now it sounded like if you didn't know
00:10:39.960 what to listen for he was agreeing if you didn't know what to listen for it sounded like he was
00:10:45.400 agreeing but what actually happened was he was saying something entirely different because
00:10:50.760 cabinet documents are secret and the government would have to acknowledge that this inquiry had
00:10:57.320 the right to those secret cabinet documents it would have to waive cabinet confidentiality and
00:11:02.520 it doesn't sound like they're prepared to do that just in the globe and mail a few days ago there
00:11:07.400 There was a court filing, a court filing, according to a justice writer, Sean Fine, in which the
00:11:13.380 government cited cabinet confidentiality in its legal filing. So they were not even prepared to
00:11:19.300 waive it in a lawsuit, in a legal challenge against it. So this is tremendously important.
00:11:25.720 And this is something that we are going to see more of because what the government is not going
00:11:29.700 to want to do is admit that it didn't have the evidence. The government is not going to want to
00:11:33.780 admit that it didn't have the information it claimed it did, that the things weren't as severe
00:11:38.760 as they claimed they were. And one example of this, because Marco Mendicino brought it up,
00:11:45.480 I'll bring it up here, the economic harm that was being unleashed by the border blockades. Now,
00:11:50.280 I was critical of the border blockades. They were a different animal from the convoy protest in
00:11:56.200 Ottawa, but I think it speaks to just how organic it was. No one was calling the shots. Trucks just
00:12:01.000 showed up. And then when they saw this thing was happening, more showed up. And both the Coutts
00:12:05.920 Crossing and the Ambassador Bridge Crossing in Ontario were dismantled without the Emergencies
00:12:11.580 Act, which I think people need to be reminded of. But when he talked about the economic harm,
00:12:16.640 Statistics Canada's own data, so this is the government's data, say, and this is, by the way,
00:12:24.100 incredible, they say that there was no effect on trade. I should be clarified. Global News did a
00:12:30.940 summary, this had little effect on trade, but the headline of the global story, the economic
00:12:36.040 nightmare that wasn't. Border blockades had little effect on trade, data reveal. And what's,
00:12:42.800 I think, fascinating here, there was a University of Toronto economics professor who said, oh,
00:12:47.000 I was surprised. I thought it would be worse. But they found that cross-border trade in Ontario
00:12:52.080 and Alberta was up 16% in February of 2021, or 2022 rather, compared to 2021. It was up 16%.
00:13:02.780 Now that was compared to the same month the year previous. So obviously pandemic and supply chain,
00:13:09.440 there might've been some issues, but the whole point is, is that it was disrupted. It was delayed,
00:13:13.560 but it didn't actually have an overall decline in trade. So if the government wants to use
00:13:21.200 that trade was devastated, that cross-border trade was brought to its knees, it can't actually
00:13:26.600 convincingly make that case because the government's own data reveal it isn't. The government's own
00:13:32.240 data reveal that is not the case at all. And what a seed processor in Fort McLeod, Alberta said is
00:13:39.440 that, yeah, everything went to a halt for a couple of days, but within a week it was being redirected
00:13:44.540 to other border crossings. It was inconvenient, but overall the trade was still taking place.
00:13:49.240 So I think this is important because you can't invoke something like the Emergencies Act,
00:13:54.980 as I understand it, over what could happen. You have to invoke it over what is happening and over
00:14:01.600 what has happened. And there were a lot of hypotheticals here. You had Marco Mendicino
00:14:06.960 talking about the importance of telling people that there was this violent plot. So again,
00:14:12.360 the possibility of violence, the possibility of a conspiracy, the possibility of a coup,
00:14:18.480 Well, that's actually different than the reality of whether that was taking place.
00:14:24.520 And I still go back to the fundamental question here of whether this inquiry is going to be focusing its efforts on investigating the government and the government's initiative here of the Emergencies Act or whether it's going to just be focused on the protests and on the protesters.
00:14:42.440 And that's very important.
00:14:44.040 I mean, they're trumpeting it as an independent review.
00:14:45.880 I've been focusing on some of the lines from the announcement by the Prime Minister's office that the judge may take this in a wildly different direction than what the government has set up.
00:14:56.040 But remember, it's the government who has established the inquiry.
00:15:00.420 It's the government that has actually put this forward.
00:15:03.440 I want to bring into this discussion two fantastic experts on this, both of whom are representing organizations that have been on the front lines of challenging the Emergencies Act and its invocation here.
00:15:15.100 The first is Joanna Barron of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who joins me now.
00:15:20.800 Joanna, always good to talk to you.
00:15:22.660 Thanks very much.
00:15:23.900 When you heard that this inquiry was coming, did you think this was going to be like just
00:15:29.140 a true, broad, fact-finding expedition that was going to get to the bottom of this, or
00:15:34.480 did you expect it would really just be box checking?
00:15:37.480 Well, I certainly hope for the best, and I was signatory to a letter that also another
00:15:42.100 guest is going to be talking about, asking for the commissioner to be appointed independently.
00:15:47.060 That did not happen. The Liberal cabinet chose who is going to direct the inquiry, who is
00:15:52.360 Justice Paul Rouleau. So I hope for the best, and I remain hoping for the best,
00:15:58.180 but early indications are not particularly encouraging.
00:16:02.360 Yeah, and obviously the government had this 60-day window to trigger this. They waited
00:16:07.040 until the last possible day, at the end of it, is there going to be a finding of whether it was
00:16:13.440 justified or unjustified? Or is it really just going to be a list of facts that people, whether
00:16:18.200 it's civil society groups, the government and the public can just look and draw their own conclusions
00:16:22.320 from? Yeah, it's unclear. Certainly, the ordering council makes clear that there's going to be no
00:16:27.880 determination of any civil or criminal liability. And it is going to be kind of a fishing expedition,
00:16:33.720 It's going to look at the circumstances leading up to the declaration of the public order emergency, but it also is tasked with looking into the findings and lessons learned on including the use of the Emergencies Act.
00:16:47.540 And we certainly hope, and the CCF has formally requested to participate in this inquiry, that those findings should include whether the requirements on its face, the legal requirements of the Emergencies Act, were in fact met.
00:17:03.760 I want to bring into this discussion Kara Zwiebel, who is with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, where she heads up the Fundamental Freedoms Program.
00:17:13.360 Kara, one of the things that jumped out at me when I saw the Prime Minister's office's announcement of this, and I'm going to read the quote again, that it will examine the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued and the measures taken in response to the emergency.
00:17:27.840 This includes the evolution of the convoy, the impact of funding and disinformation, the economic impact and the effects of police or efforts of police and other responders prior to and after.
00:17:39.800 It sounds like there's more of an emphasis on investigating the protest and the protesters rather than the government's own decision making process, which really doesn't appear in that list at all.
00:17:50.480 Yeah, I think, I mean, I think the way the government has sort of framed this is it does try to emphasize some of those aspects a little more than, you know, looking at the government's own actions and accountability and really the, you know, the inquiry being baked into the Emergencies Act is there for accountability purposes to hold the government accountable.
00:18:12.100 So while I think the government's framing is problematic, I'm not actually concerned that
00:18:16.740 the inquiry will be, you know, restrained in terms of what it can do, because I think it does
00:18:22.340 lay out those terms in fairly, you know, broad strokes. And I think that, you know,
00:18:29.960 especially looking at, of course, we want to examine sort of the law enforcement reaction
00:18:34.540 and how that all unfolded. I think that will necessarily give us answers to a lot of the
00:18:40.180 questions that we want answers to around how the government acted and then how it made the
00:18:44.900 decisions that it made. I know that several cabinet ministers have said, Cara, that there's
00:18:50.280 going to be access to confidential documents. Do we know yet if that will include cabinet documents?
00:18:56.560 I don't think we know that. You know, I know that there is a dispute about that ongoing in
00:19:02.620 in the litigation, particularly in the CCF's case involving both our organizations have
00:19:10.300 judicial review applications pending about this. And so I think the cabinet confidence issue is
00:19:16.220 raised there. I don't think we know what the inquiry will have access to yet. And I think
00:19:22.140 one of the concerns is that there is a pretty tight timeline for the inquiry in terms of when
00:19:26.700 it needs to report. And so I do hope that this kind of evidentiary and procedural wrangling
00:19:33.340 won't take up the time that's really necessary to get into the substantive issues.
00:19:38.440 Obviously, Cara just mentioned the CCF's legal challenge, the CCLA has one as well.
00:19:44.060 Let me ask you, Joanna, I mean, obviously the inquiry, as we talked about a few moments ago,
00:19:48.140 is serving a different purpose from the legal challenge, but it's ultimately the information
00:19:52.720 that's going to come out in both going to be very similar? I think in many cases, yes. And that's
00:19:58.280 why we have a concern that there will be a similar assertion to the assertion that the government is
00:20:02.860 currently making in the legal case, i.e. that they are shielding many of the relevant documents about
00:20:08.600 what happened in the lead up to the declaration of the emergency, what the deliberations were
00:20:14.320 on the level of cabinet, what information they had. They have declared cabinet confidence over
00:20:19.780 are broad swaths of that. And our submission is that at very least, those documents and that
00:20:25.420 information should be disclosed on a council only basis, as was done in the Air India inquiry. And
00:20:31.980 so if they're inserting it in the court proceeding, I don't see why they wouldn't also assert the same
00:20:36.940 in the public inquiry. And the answer should be the same, that at very least, there should be
00:20:41.620 an aspect of adversarial process and lawyers should be able to access this information.
00:20:46.760 it goes to the heart of the question, was cabinet justified in invoking this act based on what they
00:20:52.940 knew at the time? And I mean, this is a very challenging question, I'm assuming Kara, not
00:20:58.040 being a lawyer as you two are, but because there is no precedent, this is really going to set the
00:21:02.820 benchmark. So how do you decide if something that's never been done before, an act that's
00:21:06.720 never been put to the test before was justified in its invocation in this case? Is it easy for
00:21:12.920 the government to prove that hurdle by demonstrating things that could have happened, or do they have
00:21:17.820 to stick to things that were happening? You know, I think that they do have to stick to sort of the
00:21:23.800 realities on the ground. If we had had a situation where, you know, we've had now experience with
00:21:31.000 emergency declarations in all the provinces and territories related to the pandemic,
00:21:35.300 and it's kind of interesting that the federal government never felt it was necessary to invoke
00:21:40.020 the Emergencies Act to deal with the COVID pandemic. But I think, you know, a public health
00:21:45.760 crisis is a situation where you might reasonably say that the government could act in a more
00:21:51.880 precautionary kind of way. I think with a public order emergency, and particularly given that we
00:21:57.580 were, you know, in a situation where things sort of carried on for a few weeks before the federal
00:22:03.280 government decided to invoke the act, I think it would be hard for them to make an argument that,
00:22:08.900 you know, they had to do this to avoid what might happen in the future. I think they do have to
00:22:13.260 ground their justification in what was happening and what tools were available and what tools were
00:22:19.940 not available to them. I know some of the political response when the Emergencies Act was invoked came
00:22:25.720 from the fact that the more disruptive blockade, specifically at the Ambassador Bridge and the
00:22:31.540 Coutts-Alberta border crossing, had been dismantled with provincial resources without a federal
00:22:36.700 emergency. Does that, is that relevant in this context as well in the review and the litigation?
00:22:43.340 I'll start with you, Joanna. Yeah, certainly. Sorry, I didn't want to cut you off, Cara.
00:22:49.900 It's certainly relevant. I know that the questions are starting to emerge about to what extent trade
00:22:55.400 was actually impacted. I saw an article today that actually trade in Canada, including cross-border
00:23:00.960 trade went up 14% in February. But still, if there was a reasonable, you know, reasonable
00:23:07.100 pressing economic emergency, I think that is legitimate for cabinet to say that they relied
00:23:12.800 upon. The question, of course, is whether it was an economic crisis that could not effectively be
00:23:18.140 dealt with by any other law in Canada. And that's where I think there's a real problem,
00:23:22.660 particularly given that that border crossing, both border crossings were cleared using ordinary
00:23:27.500 police powers before the Emergencies Act was even invoked. Yeah, I'll go to you, Cara. Yeah,
00:23:33.020 thanks. Sorry, I muted so that you didn't hear the five-year-old screaming in the background.
00:23:38.220 Yeah, no, I think that's, I think the, I think it is relevant sort of what, you know, what could
00:23:43.580 have been done, what was done, what tools were available, and whether, you know, whether the
00:23:50.540 issues in Ottawa that weren't addressed as expeditiously as were the issues at the border
00:23:58.360 is a result of sort of an absence of political will or an absence of legal tools. And I certainly
00:24:06.020 think that the experience at the border shows that there were tools available and those tools
00:24:13.040 just needed to be put to use. So I think that's an important part of this. And I think also one
00:24:20.060 of the reasons that some provinces did object to the use of the emergencies act in the first place
00:24:24.160 they sort of said you know we do have the tools to deal with this and and it's a big deal to you
00:24:30.460 know to open up this box and once we've opened it um there's a concern about the precedent that
00:24:35.840 we've set just lastly for you joanna if this emergencies act is found to have been justified
00:24:42.980 that doesn't as i i would presume and i would hope justify everything the government did
00:24:48.320 under the auspices of the Emergencies Act. So the application in some context could still be
00:24:53.160 challenged, could it not? Yeah, certainly. In addition to the invocation of the act itself,
00:24:59.120 there's the charter rights that were violated by other following legal instruments like the
00:25:06.100 economic measures, like the measures that gave police powers to stop any public gathering if
00:25:12.580 they had reason to believe that it could result in a breach of the peace in this prophylactic way.
00:25:17.800 So the individuals whose charter rights were harmed in the subsequent actions will still be relevant and could still be found to be unlawful, even if the invocation itself is found to be valid.
00:25:29.380 And Cara, as I understand it, I mean, Ottawa, the Parliament Hill was never classified as critical infrastructure.
00:25:37.020 So did the Emergencies Act even really apply to that protest?
00:25:41.340 I've seen some dispute in that.
00:25:42.880 um no i i think that i mean the there was uh you know what i'm trying to remember now now that i
00:25:55.780 have the terms of reference from the like the latest order in council around the emergencies
00:25:59.560 act i'm getting confused with with what was actually in the the emergency um order itself
00:26:04.820 um you know i i don't think there's a doubt that under the order under the powers that the
00:26:10.820 government gave itself, they did have the authority to clear out downtown Ottawa, you
00:26:18.080 know, but the question is sort of whether, because the orders, the powers that they gave
00:26:23.620 themselves did extend beyond that, right? It extended really from coast to coast to coast,
00:26:29.420 and it affected, it couldn't be used against any individual across the country. So, you know,
00:26:36.100 That's one of the things I think in both the litigation and perhaps in the inquiry that we'll be talking about is even if, as you say, even if someone were to accept that it was appropriate to proclaim an emergency, were the orders that the government put in place broader than they needed to be to sort of get the job done?
00:26:57.580 Cara Zwiebel, Director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties
00:27:02.380 Association, and Joanna Barron, Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
00:27:07.360 Thank you both so much, not just for your time, but also your tremendous work on this
00:27:10.500 file.
00:27:10.820 I really appreciate it.
00:27:12.120 Thank you.
00:27:12.540 Thank you.
00:27:13.720 Yeah, it's truly, truly astonishing.
00:27:17.120 And I know that Cara was a bit more optimistic than I was that the actual inquiry will be
00:27:22.420 fulsome and broad.
00:27:23.480 I was latching on to what Justin Trudeau said, in which, again, he wants a full inquiry into the
00:27:27.860 convoy. He wants an inquiry into the protesters rather than his own government. And I think
00:27:32.740 there's an important point here that even if, even if we find and accept and all agree that
00:27:38.140 the Emergencies Act was hunky-dory, which I think is a big if, it doesn't mean that everything they
00:27:42.840 did under it was. And I go back to, again, police denying individuals the right to walk down the
00:27:50.860 Street in Ottawa, which was supposed to be lawful. You were supposed to be able to go into the so-called
00:27:56.420 red zone if you had a lawful purpose for doing it, which means anyone that wasn't going in there to
00:28:01.220 break the law, anyone that wanted to even protest on the front lawn of Parliament Hill should have
00:28:06.280 been allowed to do that, not threatened with arrest or in some cases actually arrested. So we'll cover
00:28:11.420 this more in the shows to come. I suspect this is going to go on for weeks or months. Wanted to
00:28:17.240 pivot ever so slightly on the topic of downtown Ottawa to a conference that's taking place in just
00:28:23.200 a couple of weeks time actually not even I think it's like a week and a half now because it kicks
00:28:26.580 off on March 5th and that is the Canada Strong and Free Networks conference formerly the Manning
00:28:32.960 Centre joining me from the Canada Strong and Free Networks is Kate Harrison the program lead there
00:28:38.300 Kate always good to talk to you I know people see you on TV all the time so I'm glad you
00:28:41.860 took some time for us today. What's on the agenda? Well, you're my favorite, Andrew, so don't tell
00:28:48.700 anybody else. Yeah, we do have a really packed agenda coming up. As you say, things are set to
00:28:54.900 kick off on Thursday, May 5th. It's happening at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa. And this is the first
00:29:00.280 time, Andrew, as you know, that we have everybody back together in person post-COVID. We had a
00:29:05.580 couple of virtual conferences that happened in 2020 and 21. Needless to say, we're keen to be
00:29:12.180 back in person. So a few big highlights on the program. We're kicking things off on Thursday
00:29:17.760 night with a debate between Conservative Party candidate leadership contenders. That's going to
00:29:23.220 be happening on our main stage. And that'll be really the first opportunity for those candidates
00:29:28.080 that are on the ballot to face off against one another and answer some questions in a room full
00:29:34.540 of activists and grassroots conservatives. So Jamil Javani and Candice Malcolm are going to be
00:29:41.480 our moderators for that evening. That's Thursday. On Friday, we've got a couple of really great
00:29:47.760 sessions lined up with former Premier Mike Harris, of course, Preston Manning talking about
00:29:51.920 the state of the country. We're going to have a debate on big tech regulation. That's going to be
00:29:57.140 with Robby Soave and Jamil Javani. Eric Duhaime, the leader of the Conservatives, the Conservative
00:30:02.820 Party in Quebec is going to be speaking that day as well. Interim leader Candice Bergen,
00:30:07.540 leader of the official opposition. And then on Saturday, we're going to have Yeonmi Park. She's
00:30:12.180 a North Korean dissident, has led a number of talks about the importance of free speech.
00:30:17.860 She's had an incredible journey from her time in leaving North Korea and talking about
00:30:22.740 the struggles of the people there. And a bit of a forward look from some younger members of the
00:30:27.780 Conservative Caucus about what they see as the future of the party. So those are some of the
00:30:31.860 the big highlights on the agenda, but lots more sprinkled in there. One of the things that's
00:30:36.620 always been interesting about the former Manning conferences is that it was always focused on the
00:30:41.560 conservative movement and not the conservative party, which I thought was important. And
00:30:45.780 obviously you have a lot of overlap there, certainly before you had the split off into
00:30:50.160 the PPC and whatnot. I mean, every conservative member of parliament and cabinet minister when
00:30:55.040 Stephen Harper was in government would always come. And obviously you've got the conservative
00:30:58.980 leadership race this time around. What would you say is generally speaking, the level of optimism,
00:31:04.080 if there is optimism in the conservative movement in Canada right now?
00:31:07.980 Yeah, it's a good question. And to your point about kind of that separation between the movement
00:31:13.280 and the party, we really pride ourselves at this forum of making sure that it's not just for
00:31:18.540 card carrying conservative members. There are a lot of people, obviously, that align
00:31:22.560 with different aspects of conservatism that maybe don't even intend to vote in the leadership race.
00:31:27.740 But this is a good opportunity to hear from those in the formal big C conservative movement as well as those leaders outside of the movement.
00:31:37.020 They're either with think tanks, grassroots organizations, other content creators, people that are really leading in this space.
00:31:44.360 And I think that especially emerging out of the pandemic, looking around at the state of government in this country and other countries, there's a real desire for change and an optimism that maybe a small C conservative thought can can take root and take hold as it has in, of course, some jurisdictions in the US come to mind, but elsewhere around the world.
00:32:06.260 So I think that Conservatives are feeling positive about the movement, positive about reconnecting with one another.
00:32:12.800 This is a good chance to hear from those in the party, but also outside the party about their reflections on the state of the movement heading into this year and future years as well.
00:32:22.840 I remember in 2017, the conference held a leadership debate, but that was the year where we had like, I think it was like 72,000 leadership candidates.
00:32:32.460 And I remember the conference did something really great, which no one else had done because I moderated one of those like 13 person debates and it was a little bit overwhelming.
00:32:40.780 They broke it up into like different debates and like mini debates.
00:32:44.000 I think groups of three or four, you know, one group would do the foreign policy debate.
00:32:47.940 Another would do the economics debate.
00:32:49.400 It actually worked out pretty well.
00:32:50.980 This time you'll probably have fewer candidates.
00:32:52.900 So I think it'll be more manageable.
00:32:54.580 Yeah, I think that's right.
00:32:55.760 And, you know, there were some of those considerations as well, depending on the event timing.
00:32:59.500 Were we going to go that route or are we going to just have everybody on stage at once?
00:33:03.740 There's a pretty big deadline coming up April 29th, and that is when we would know with
00:33:08.600 some certainty who is going to be on the ballot for the Conservative Party race.
00:33:15.780 So only those candidates that are verified, Andrew, are going to be on our debate stage.
00:33:19.900 I think that it will be a pretty manageable number.
00:33:22.960 Not the first time we've had to try and organize a leadership debate on the fly.
00:33:26.640 We had to do that as well in 2019, 2020 after Andrew Scheer departed.
00:33:31.640 So something we've been trying to wrap our heads around at the conference because we have a full program kind of prior to this starting.
00:33:39.000 So we're able to make it work.
00:33:40.640 But, you know, as an organizer, we're hoping that this is the last leadership race for some time because it'd be great to have some consistency.
00:33:47.740 Yeah.
00:33:48.280 What are you looking forward to?
00:33:50.660 There's a few sessions on the agenda that I think are going to be really, really compelling.
00:33:54.700 We're doing a session called What's Happening in Our Cities, and that's going to be featuring Michael Schellenberger, who's obviously written quite a bit on the nature of the opioid crisis, addictions and treatment in San Francisco, the failed policies of the left in that particular area, and both helping addicts but also protecting communities.
00:34:13.600 And we're going to have some other subject matter experts on that panel as well.
00:34:17.200 This is a subject matter that is, in my view, unfortunately, really dominated by left of center voices.
00:34:23.700 They like to wrap their arms around issues around addiction and mental health and claim
00:34:27.500 it as their own, when in fact, a lot of small C conservative policies can really help those
00:34:32.160 that are struggling.
00:34:33.620 So I'm really looking forward to that session.
00:34:35.720 We have a few others on education reform, cost of living crisis, among other things.
00:34:41.380 So I'm really excited in some of the meat on the agenda outside of the few big sessions.
00:34:48.220 So there's really something for everybody in this particular conference lineup.
00:34:51.900 We're also doing a global hotspot session, talking with experts about the threats today,
00:34:57.880 obviously posed by Eastern Europe, where Canada fits in to the mix, but also the nature of the
00:35:03.580 Canada-US relationship, the relation with China, among other things. So a little bit of something
00:35:08.780 for everybody. I'm really bad at conferences because I'll have this great session, these
00:35:13.760 great sessions that I want to go to. And then I just like find someone in the hall I haven't seen
00:35:17.080 in like seven years and just like talk to them and miss it. But they're all good. You can go
00:35:20.620 there for the socializing you can go there for the programming or the leadership debates and if
00:35:25.420 you see me walking around as well do say hello and i get to see you again i haven't seen you in a
00:35:29.020 couple of years i think with all the uh everything being shut down so uh thanks very much for coming
00:35:33.560 on we'll see you in ottawa and many of you tuning in kate harrison thanks so much thanks a lot andrew
00:35:38.920 see you in ottawa all right we'll see you then that is the canada strong and free network and
00:35:42.860 true north the reason i i'm focusing on this so much is because true north is actually going to
00:35:46.880 be broadcasting from the conference. We'll have lots going on there. Candice Malcolm, I know she's
00:35:52.500 going to be busy with the debate Thursday night, but she'll be in the True North Media Centre later
00:35:56.840 on. And I don't even know what we're doing there. I know we're going to be just doing all sorts of
00:36:00.740 stuff, interviewing people. Some of it will be streaming live. Others will be recording for
00:36:05.960 later on. So you won't want to miss that, I hope. That does it for us for today. We will talk to
00:36:11.880 you in a couple days time with more of canada's most irreverent talk show here on true north this
00:36:17.120 is the andrew lawton show thank you god bless and good day to you all for listening to the
00:36:23.360 andrew lawton show support the program by donating to true north at www.tnc.news
00:36:41.880 We'll be right back.
00:37:11.880 You