00:06:04.160When this country was faced with very real threats to critical infrastructure,
00:06:09.120our vital supply lines, and the incredible disruption that was taking place right out here in the streets of Ottawa,
00:06:14.120our government did what was necessary and required to deal with that situation through the invocation of the Act.
00:06:20.640Mr. 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.
00:06:36.760Mr. Speaker, we will do what is required and we will do it in the right way.
00:06:42.620A public inquiry into the circumstances of the act.
00:06:46.720Now, 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.
00:07:04.900I want to play another clip of Marco Mendocino. He is the public safety minister now. And why
00:07:11.540Marco Mendocino is relevant here is because when the Emergencies Act was put in place,
00:07:16.100initially, he gave this press conference that I covered and I played the clip of on this show.
00:07:20.880And it was a long clip. I didn't play the whole thing on the show, but I posted it online if you
00:07:25.180want to go and look it up. I think it was like five and a half, six minutes long. And at first
00:07:29.340he said that there was evidence connecting a violent cell that wanted to commit acts of
00:07:34.140violence in Ottawa and overthrow the government, and that this was tied to the convoy in Ottawa.
00:07:39.560And he made a very clear and a very decisive proclamation of this. And to their credit,
00:07:44.900reporters there asked him to pony up the evidence and said, what do you mean by this?
00:07:49.000What are you talking about? What group? What plot? What violence? And it took like four or five times
00:07:54.320asking the question before he finally walked it back. And not only did he walk it back, but he
00:07:59.640walked it back to such a point where it was unrecognizable. And he said, well, he's seen
00:08:05.340things on Twitter that, you know, were a bit concerning. So he went from a conspiracy to
00:08:10.940overthrow the government with violent force to I saw mean tweets. And you may think this is just
00:08:17.420a little gaffe or something you can poke fun at him over, a little thing that's just amusing. Oh,
00:08:22.200yeah, the minister that fumbled his words. But it's very significant because you're talking about
00:08:26.640governments that are prepared to be brazenly dishonest, simply to justify and to rationalize
00:08:34.060their invocation of this act. And he still has not put forward any evidence. Let's play
00:08:39.160the clip of Marco Mendicino talking about the Emergencies Act specifically.
00:08:45.760Minister Mendicino, I think I'm wrong. It was overreached to invoke the act. And would you do
00:08:51.060it again, like considering for this weekend the Rolling Thunder protest? Would you use this tool
00:08:54.820again? Well, I think we can be unequivocally clear about a number of things looking back
00:08:59.980in the events of January and February of this year. One, the incredible and devastating
00:09:07.160damage that was done to public safety at ports of entry in the form of interruption to trade
00:09:15.140and travel, the interruption to supply chains, including with regards to vital health supplies,
00:09:22.920which Canadians needed on a daily basis, the disruption to public safety in our communities,
00:09:30.600in our neighborhoods, and the unique and unprecedented challenges that these illegal
00:09:36.440occupations and blockades posed. And it was only after very careful consideration on the advice of
00:09:46.680professional non-partisan branches of law enforcement that we invoked the emergencies act
00:09:54.040it was a necessary decision it was a responsible decision it was the right thing to do and we are
00:10:00.520certainly looking forward to cooperating with justice rouleau in the context of this public
00:10:05.640inquiry so that he has the fulsome record as well as the joint parliamentary committee which is uh
00:10:11.480looking at this at the same time so the follow-up question there he was asked just
00:10:21.560so to point this out because i thought we had the clip there was whether the inquiry the judge
00:10:26.840presiding over would have access to cabinet documents and his response says the inquiry
00:10:32.360will have access to a broad array of confidential documents now it sounded like if you didn't know
00:10:39.960what to listen for he was agreeing if you didn't know what to listen for it sounded like he was
00:10:45.400agreeing but what actually happened was he was saying something entirely different because
00:10:50.760cabinet documents are secret and the government would have to acknowledge that this inquiry had
00:10:57.320the right to those secret cabinet documents it would have to waive cabinet confidentiality and
00:11:02.520it doesn't sound like they're prepared to do that just in the globe and mail a few days ago there
00:11:07.400There was a court filing, a court filing, according to a justice writer, Sean Fine, in which the
00:11:13.380government cited cabinet confidentiality in its legal filing. So they were not even prepared to
00:11:19.300waive it in a lawsuit, in a legal challenge against it. So this is tremendously important.
00:11:25.720And this is something that we are going to see more of because what the government is not going
00:11:29.700to want to do is admit that it didn't have the evidence. The government is not going to want to
00:11:33.780admit that it didn't have the information it claimed it did, that the things weren't as severe
00:11:38.760as they claimed they were. And one example of this, because Marco Mendicino brought it up,
00:11:45.480I'll bring it up here, the economic harm that was being unleashed by the border blockades. Now,
00:11:50.280I was critical of the border blockades. They were a different animal from the convoy protest in
00:11:56.200Ottawa, but I think it speaks to just how organic it was. No one was calling the shots. Trucks just
00:12:01.000showed up. And then when they saw this thing was happening, more showed up. And both the Coutts
00:12:05.920Crossing and the Ambassador Bridge Crossing in Ontario were dismantled without the Emergencies
00:12:11.580Act, which I think people need to be reminded of. But when he talked about the economic harm,
00:12:16.640Statistics Canada's own data, so this is the government's data, say, and this is, by the way,
00:12:24.100incredible, they say that there was no effect on trade. I should be clarified. Global News did a
00:12:30.940summary, this had little effect on trade, but the headline of the global story, the economic
00:12:36.040nightmare that wasn't. Border blockades had little effect on trade, data reveal. And what's,
00:12:42.800I think, fascinating here, there was a University of Toronto economics professor who said, oh,
00:12:47.000I was surprised. I thought it would be worse. But they found that cross-border trade in Ontario
00:12:52.080and Alberta was up 16% in February of 2021, or 2022 rather, compared to 2021. It was up 16%.
00:13:02.780Now that was compared to the same month the year previous. So obviously pandemic and supply chain,
00:13:09.440there might've been some issues, but the whole point is, is that it was disrupted. It was delayed,
00:13:13.560but it didn't actually have an overall decline in trade. So if the government wants to use
00:13:21.200that trade was devastated, that cross-border trade was brought to its knees, it can't actually
00:13:26.600convincingly make that case because the government's own data reveal it isn't. The government's own
00:13:32.240data reveal that is not the case at all. And what a seed processor in Fort McLeod, Alberta said is
00:13:39.440that, yeah, everything went to a halt for a couple of days, but within a week it was being redirected
00:13:44.540to other border crossings. It was inconvenient, but overall the trade was still taking place.
00:13:49.240So I think this is important because you can't invoke something like the Emergencies Act,
00:13:54.980as I understand it, over what could happen. You have to invoke it over what is happening and over
00:14:01.600what has happened. And there were a lot of hypotheticals here. You had Marco Mendicino
00:14:06.960talking about the importance of telling people that there was this violent plot. So again,
00:14:12.360the possibility of violence, the possibility of a conspiracy, the possibility of a coup,
00:14:18.480Well, that's actually different than the reality of whether that was taking place.
00:14:24.520And 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.
00:14:44.040I mean, they're trumpeting it as an independent review.
00:14:45.880I'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.
00:14:56.040But remember, it's the government who has established the inquiry.
00:15:00.420It's the government that has actually put this forward.
00:15:03.440I 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.
00:15:15.100The first is Joanna Barron of the Canadian Constitution Foundation, who joins me now.
00:15:23.900When you heard that this inquiry was coming, did you think this was going to be like just
00:15:29.140a true, broad, fact-finding expedition that was going to get to the bottom of this, or
00:15:34.480did you expect it would really just be box checking?
00:15:37.480Well, I certainly hope for the best, and I was signatory to a letter that also another
00:15:42.100guest is going to be talking about, asking for the commissioner to be appointed independently.
00:15:47.060That did not happen. The Liberal cabinet chose who is going to direct the inquiry, who is
00:15:52.360Justice Paul Rouleau. So I hope for the best, and I remain hoping for the best,
00:15:58.180but early indications are not particularly encouraging.
00:16:02.360Yeah, and obviously the government had this 60-day window to trigger this. They waited
00:16:07.040until the last possible day, at the end of it, is there going to be a finding of whether it was
00:16:13.440justified or unjustified? Or is it really just going to be a list of facts that people, whether
00:16:18.200it's civil society groups, the government and the public can just look and draw their own conclusions
00:16:22.320from? Yeah, it's unclear. Certainly, the ordering council makes clear that there's going to be no
00:16:27.880determination of any civil or criminal liability. And it is going to be kind of a fishing expedition,
00:16:33.720It'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.
00:16:47.540And 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.
00:17:03.760I want to bring into this discussion Kara Zwiebel, who is with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, where she heads up the Fundamental Freedoms Program.
00:17:13.360Kara, 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.
00:17:27.840This 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.
00:17:39.800It 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.
00:17:50.480Yeah, 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.
00:18:12.100So while I think the government's framing is problematic, I'm not actually concerned that
00:18:16.740the inquiry will be, you know, restrained in terms of what it can do, because I think it does
00:18:22.340lay out those terms in fairly, you know, broad strokes. And I think that, you know,
00:18:29.960especially looking at, of course, we want to examine sort of the law enforcement reaction
00:18:34.540and how that all unfolded. I think that will necessarily give us answers to a lot of the
00:18:40.180questions that we want answers to around how the government acted and then how it made the
00:18:44.900decisions that it made. I know that several cabinet ministers have said, Cara, that there's
00:18:50.280going to be access to confidential documents. Do we know yet if that will include cabinet documents?
00:18:56.560I don't think we know that. You know, I know that there is a dispute about that ongoing in
00:19:02.620in the litigation, particularly in the CCF's case involving both our organizations have
00:19:10.300judicial review applications pending about this. And so I think the cabinet confidence issue is
00:19:16.220raised there. I don't think we know what the inquiry will have access to yet. And I think
00:19:22.140one of the concerns is that there is a pretty tight timeline for the inquiry in terms of when
00:19:26.700it needs to report. And so I do hope that this kind of evidentiary and procedural wrangling
00:19:33.340won't take up the time that's really necessary to get into the substantive issues.
00:19:38.440Obviously, Cara just mentioned the CCF's legal challenge, the CCLA has one as well.
00:19:44.060Let me ask you, Joanna, I mean, obviously the inquiry, as we talked about a few moments ago,
00:19:48.140is serving a different purpose from the legal challenge, but it's ultimately the information
00:19:52.720that's going to come out in both going to be very similar? I think in many cases, yes. And that's
00:19:58.280why we have a concern that there will be a similar assertion to the assertion that the government is
00:20:02.860currently making in the legal case, i.e. that they are shielding many of the relevant documents about
00:20:08.600what happened in the lead up to the declaration of the emergency, what the deliberations were
00:20:14.320on the level of cabinet, what information they had. They have declared cabinet confidence over
00:20:19.780are broad swaths of that. And our submission is that at very least, those documents and that
00:20:25.420information should be disclosed on a council only basis, as was done in the Air India inquiry. And
00:20:31.980so if they're inserting it in the court proceeding, I don't see why they wouldn't also assert the same
00:20:36.940in the public inquiry. And the answer should be the same, that at very least, there should be
00:20:41.620an aspect of adversarial process and lawyers should be able to access this information.
00:20:46.760it goes to the heart of the question, was cabinet justified in invoking this act based on what they
00:20:52.940knew at the time? And I mean, this is a very challenging question, I'm assuming Kara, not
00:20:58.040being a lawyer as you two are, but because there is no precedent, this is really going to set the
00:21:02.820benchmark. So how do you decide if something that's never been done before, an act that's
00:21:06.720never been put to the test before was justified in its invocation in this case? Is it easy for
00:21:12.920the government to prove that hurdle by demonstrating things that could have happened, or do they have
00:21:17.820to stick to things that were happening? You know, I think that they do have to stick to sort of the
00:21:23.800realities on the ground. If we had had a situation where, you know, we've had now experience with
00:21:31.000emergency declarations in all the provinces and territories related to the pandemic,
00:21:35.300and it's kind of interesting that the federal government never felt it was necessary to invoke
00:21:40.020the Emergencies Act to deal with the COVID pandemic. But I think, you know, a public health
00:21:45.760crisis is a situation where you might reasonably say that the government could act in a more
00:21:51.880precautionary kind of way. I think with a public order emergency, and particularly given that we
00:21:57.580were, you know, in a situation where things sort of carried on for a few weeks before the federal
00:22:03.280government decided to invoke the act, I think it would be hard for them to make an argument that,
00:22:08.900you know, they had to do this to avoid what might happen in the future. I think they do have to
00:22:13.260ground their justification in what was happening and what tools were available and what tools were
00:22:19.940not available to them. I know some of the political response when the Emergencies Act was invoked came
00:22:25.720from the fact that the more disruptive blockade, specifically at the Ambassador Bridge and the
00:22:31.540Coutts-Alberta border crossing, had been dismantled with provincial resources without a federal
00:22:36.700emergency. Does that, is that relevant in this context as well in the review and the litigation?
00:22:43.340I'll start with you, Joanna. Yeah, certainly. Sorry, I didn't want to cut you off, Cara.
00:22:49.900It's certainly relevant. I know that the questions are starting to emerge about to what extent trade
00:22:55.400was actually impacted. I saw an article today that actually trade in Canada, including cross-border
00:23:00.960trade went up 14% in February. But still, if there was a reasonable, you know, reasonable
00:23:07.100pressing economic emergency, I think that is legitimate for cabinet to say that they relied
00:23:12.800upon. The question, of course, is whether it was an economic crisis that could not effectively be
00:23:18.140dealt with by any other law in Canada. And that's where I think there's a real problem,
00:23:22.660particularly given that that border crossing, both border crossings were cleared using ordinary
00:23:27.500police powers before the Emergencies Act was even invoked. Yeah, I'll go to you, Cara. Yeah,
00:23:33.020thanks. Sorry, I muted so that you didn't hear the five-year-old screaming in the background.
00:23:38.220Yeah, no, I think that's, I think the, I think it is relevant sort of what, you know, what could
00:23:43.580have been done, what was done, what tools were available, and whether, you know, whether the
00:23:50.540issues in Ottawa that weren't addressed as expeditiously as were the issues at the border
00:23:58.360is a result of sort of an absence of political will or an absence of legal tools. And I certainly
00:24:06.020think that the experience at the border shows that there were tools available and those tools
00:24:13.040just needed to be put to use. So I think that's an important part of this. And I think also one
00:24:20.060of the reasons that some provinces did object to the use of the emergencies act in the first place
00:24:24.160they sort of said you know we do have the tools to deal with this and and it's a big deal to you
00:24:30.460know to open up this box and once we've opened it um there's a concern about the precedent that
00:24:35.840we've set just lastly for you joanna if this emergencies act is found to have been justified
00:24:42.980that doesn't as i i would presume and i would hope justify everything the government did
00:24:48.320under the auspices of the Emergencies Act. So the application in some context could still be
00:24:53.160challenged, could it not? Yeah, certainly. In addition to the invocation of the act itself,
00:24:59.120there's the charter rights that were violated by other following legal instruments like the
00:25:06.100economic measures, like the measures that gave police powers to stop any public gathering if
00:25:12.580they had reason to believe that it could result in a breach of the peace in this prophylactic way.
00:25:17.800So 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.
00:25:29.380And Cara, as I understand it, I mean, Ottawa, the Parliament Hill was never classified as critical infrastructure.
00:25:37.020So did the Emergencies Act even really apply to that protest?
00:25:42.880um no i i think that i mean the there was uh you know what i'm trying to remember now now that i
00:25:55.780have the terms of reference from the like the latest order in council around the emergencies
00:25:59.560act i'm getting confused with with what was actually in the the emergency um order itself
00:26:04.820um you know i i don't think there's a doubt that under the order under the powers that the
00:26:10.820government gave itself, they did have the authority to clear out downtown Ottawa, you
00:26:18.080know, but the question is sort of whether, because the orders, the powers that they gave
00:26:23.620themselves did extend beyond that, right? It extended really from coast to coast to coast,
00:26:29.420and it affected, it couldn't be used against any individual across the country. So, you know,
00:26:36.100That'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?
00:26:57.580Cara Zwiebel, Director of the Fundamental Freedoms Program at the Canadian Civil Liberties
00:27:02.380Association, and Joanna Barron, Executive Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation.
00:27:07.360Thank you both so much, not just for your time, but also your tremendous work on this
00:27:23.480I was latching on to what Justin Trudeau said, in which, again, he wants a full inquiry into the
00:27:27.860convoy. He wants an inquiry into the protesters rather than his own government. And I think
00:27:32.740there's an important point here that even if, even if we find and accept and all agree that
00:27:38.140the Emergencies Act was hunky-dory, which I think is a big if, it doesn't mean that everything they
00:27:42.840did under it was. And I go back to, again, police denying individuals the right to walk down the
00:27:50.860Street in Ottawa, which was supposed to be lawful. You were supposed to be able to go into the so-called
00:27:56.420red zone if you had a lawful purpose for doing it, which means anyone that wasn't going in there to
00:28:01.220break the law, anyone that wanted to even protest on the front lawn of Parliament Hill should have
00:28:06.280been allowed to do that, not threatened with arrest or in some cases actually arrested. So we'll cover
00:28:11.420this more in the shows to come. I suspect this is going to go on for weeks or months. Wanted to
00:28:17.240pivot ever so slightly on the topic of downtown Ottawa to a conference that's taking place in just
00:28:23.200a couple of weeks time actually not even I think it's like a week and a half now because it kicks
00:28:26.580off on March 5th and that is the Canada Strong and Free Networks conference formerly the Manning
00:28:32.960Centre joining me from the Canada Strong and Free Networks is Kate Harrison the program lead there
00:28:38.300Kate always good to talk to you I know people see you on TV all the time so I'm glad you
00:28:41.860took some time for us today. What's on the agenda? Well, you're my favorite, Andrew, so don't tell
00:28:48.700anybody else. Yeah, we do have a really packed agenda coming up. As you say, things are set to
00:28:54.900kick off on Thursday, May 5th. It's happening at the Shaw Centre in Ottawa. And this is the first
00:29:00.280time, Andrew, as you know, that we have everybody back together in person post-COVID. We had a
00:29:05.580couple of virtual conferences that happened in 2020 and 21. Needless to say, we're keen to be
00:29:12.180back in person. So a few big highlights on the program. We're kicking things off on Thursday
00:29:17.760night with a debate between Conservative Party candidate leadership contenders. That's going to
00:29:23.220be happening on our main stage. And that'll be really the first opportunity for those candidates
00:29:28.080that are on the ballot to face off against one another and answer some questions in a room full
00:29:34.540of activists and grassroots conservatives. So Jamil Javani and Candice Malcolm are going to be
00:29:41.480our moderators for that evening. That's Thursday. On Friday, we've got a couple of really great
00:29:47.760sessions lined up with former Premier Mike Harris, of course, Preston Manning talking about
00:29:51.920the state of the country. We're going to have a debate on big tech regulation. That's going to be
00:29:57.140with Robby Soave and Jamil Javani. Eric Duhaime, the leader of the Conservatives, the Conservative
00:30:02.820Party in Quebec is going to be speaking that day as well. Interim leader Candice Bergen,
00:30:07.540leader of the official opposition. And then on Saturday, we're going to have Yeonmi Park. She's
00:30:12.180a North Korean dissident, has led a number of talks about the importance of free speech.
00:30:17.860She's had an incredible journey from her time in leaving North Korea and talking about
00:30:22.740the struggles of the people there. And a bit of a forward look from some younger members of the
00:30:27.780Conservative Caucus about what they see as the future of the party. So those are some of the
00:30:31.860the big highlights on the agenda, but lots more sprinkled in there. One of the things that's
00:30:36.620always been interesting about the former Manning conferences is that it was always focused on the
00:30:41.560conservative movement and not the conservative party, which I thought was important. And
00:30:45.780obviously you have a lot of overlap there, certainly before you had the split off into
00:30:50.160the PPC and whatnot. I mean, every conservative member of parliament and cabinet minister when
00:30:55.040Stephen Harper was in government would always come. And obviously you've got the conservative
00:30:58.980leadership race this time around. What would you say is generally speaking, the level of optimism,
00:31:04.080if there is optimism in the conservative movement in Canada right now?
00:31:07.980Yeah, it's a good question. And to your point about kind of that separation between the movement
00:31:13.280and the party, we really pride ourselves at this forum of making sure that it's not just for
00:31:18.540card carrying conservative members. There are a lot of people, obviously, that align
00:31:22.560with different aspects of conservatism that maybe don't even intend to vote in the leadership race.
00:31:27.740But 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.
00:31:37.020They're either with think tanks, grassroots organizations, other content creators, people that are really leading in this space.
00:31:44.360And 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.
00:32:06.260So I think that Conservatives are feeling positive about the movement, positive about reconnecting with one another.
00:32:12.800This 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.
00:32:22.840I 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.
00:32:32.460And 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.
00:32:40.780They broke it up into like different debates and like mini debates.
00:32:44.000I think groups of three or four, you know, one group would do the foreign policy debate.
00:32:47.940Another would do the economics debate.
00:33:40.640But, 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.
00:33:50.660There's a few sessions on the agenda that I think are going to be really, really compelling.
00:33:54.700We'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.
00:34:13.600And we're going to have some other subject matter experts on that panel as well.
00:34:17.200This is a subject matter that is, in my view, unfortunately, really dominated by left of center voices.
00:34:23.700They like to wrap their arms around issues around addiction and mental health and claim
00:34:27.500it as their own, when in fact, a lot of small C conservative policies can really help those