The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - The Blueprint： Emergencies Act Update

00:00:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:00:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:01:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:01:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:00.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:30.000 We'll be right back.

00:02:59.980 We still don't believe that.

00:03:01.320 Talk about that.

00:03:02.140 We have Raquel Dancho, Member of Parliament for Kildona and St. Paul.

00:03:05.080 So the public safety critic, thank you so much for joining us.

00:03:08.920 Great to be with you, Jamie.

00:03:09.840 It's wonderful to be back.

00:03:11.420 And it's exciting news that the inquiry has got started and we can really get to the bottom of what happened.

00:03:16.220 And I don't think the Liberals were always being very honest.

00:03:17.940 So we're quite interested to see what is discovered through this inquiry.

00:03:22.000 I think a few articles have already come out in the National Post and others saying that the bar has not been met.

00:03:28.840 And this is a pretty early indication as the public inquiry goes on.

00:03:33.120 Many people are already coming to that conclusion.

00:03:35.440 The bar was not met.

00:03:36.560 The protests at the border, like the protests at the border, Coutts, Alberta, and the Ambassador Bridge.

00:03:41.620 They were cleared before the Emergencies Act.

00:03:44.640 And now I'm going to read this from Black Locks reporter.

00:03:47.180 That came out this morning that the Freedom Convoy organizers were complying with a city agreement.

00:03:53.040 So the City of Ottawa met an agreement to move the trucks away the very day that Cabinet declared a national emergency.

00:04:00.800 And that was the Ottawa City Manager who told the inquiry that yesterday.

00:04:05.000 Very interesting.

00:04:05.740 And I think there's going to be more of this coming out.

00:04:07.660 And, you know, I think it's interesting, Jamie, because many people don't understand that the Emergencies Act is a follow-up to the War Measures Act.

00:04:14.040 So it's our modern-day War Measures Act, which is the most powerful law in the land designed for the absolute worst-case scenario.

00:04:20.640 So if you think about it like a, you know, it's hard to think about, but something like an invasion or like a mass telecommunications collapse or even, you know, deadly pandemic,

00:04:28.820 those are the types of things that you may, governments may be justified in the most extreme circumstances to need to curtail charter rights in order to protect the greater national security framework.

00:04:39.680 But the problem is, is that, of course, as you outlined, we don't believe that that threshold was met during the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa.

00:04:47.160 And as you've said, certainly there were the border blockades, which were illegal.

00:04:51.380 And, of course, as Conservatives, we condemn any blockades of railways, pipelines, bridges, roadways.

00:04:57.680 That being said, those were effectively cleared without any emergency powers.

00:05:01.600 So that sort of economic argument that the Liberal government had been making was a non-starter because they didn't, those powers were not needed.

00:05:08.760 The RCMP were able to effectively clear those.

00:05:10.980 Now, if you talk about the demonstration in Ottawa, certainly the resident, many residents of Ottawa, I live in Ottawa, half the time, so do you.

00:05:19.820 We were living in Ottawa at this time.

00:05:21.820 Some people believed it was, you know, very traumatizing for them.

00:05:24.320 And that's fair enough.

00:05:25.160 They have every right to feel that way.

00:05:26.480 No one is downplaying that this was a significant event in Ottawa.

00:05:30.260 The question is, did it constitute a national emergency, as I've just discussed?

00:05:35.040 And we don't believe that it did, and therefore the invocation of the Act and the powers therein were not justified.

00:05:41.160 Yeah, I think you raise a good point.

00:05:43.120 Like, this is supposed to be a piece of legislation that has national implications, right, from a major incident that would happen that would affect a large majority of the population.

00:05:56.380 Agreed.

00:05:56.820 There were some blocks within Ottawa that had very difficult times, according to the testimony.

00:06:04.120 But at the same time, it did not have the same implications, even in your province of Manitoba.

00:06:09.600 Right.

00:06:10.260 And I think that's a really key piece.

00:06:13.000 And again, the two sort of, the thresholds that have to be met are either an economic one or public safety one.

00:06:18.620 And if the demonstration in Ottawa was a threat to public safety, would they have really allowed members of parliament, the prime minister, the deputy prime minister, members of the public, members of the press, to walk around this demonstration if it was, you know, a national threat to public safety?

00:06:36.160 I have a hard time believing that it was that level of danger.

00:06:40.000 Otherwise, there's just no way that, I mean, I walked home 10 o'clock at night after work almost every day when that demonstration was here.

00:06:46.920 You know, they provided security if we wanted it, but it wasn't, we highly recommend you, you know, or you should be at home in Manitoba from Zoom.

00:06:54.000 There was no communications like that whatsoever.

00:06:56.900 And half the federal cabinet, if not the whole federal cabinet, was in Ottawa, in West Block, in the center of it.

00:07:02.260 So that's really what just doesn't seem to make sense at all.

00:07:04.980 If it was that much of a threat, there's just no way with our Zoom capabilities that that would have been permitted.

00:07:09.720 Yeah, absolutely.

00:07:10.580 And what the justification at the time that was used, I remember the public safety minister, Marco Mendicino, going up in parliament saying, we're concerned about weapons.

00:07:20.500 And of course, our colleague, Dane Lloyd, talked to the agencies, the police agencies involved.

00:07:25.480 They didn't find any firearms.

00:07:27.260 We see Block Lock's reporter, if to our viewers and listeners, if you haven't checked it out, please do.

00:07:32.920 They're doing a great job covering it.

00:07:34.220 Just talking about the various sides, but they're talking about memos from national security agencies that did not see the threat needed to justify invoking the Emergencies Act.

00:07:47.040 And the Liberals were really drawing on a lot of different things that we found out later were not accurate.

00:07:52.720 Many of them said that convoy protesters started a fire in an apartment building.

00:07:57.480 We later found out that that wasn't connected at all to the protesters.

00:08:00.680 They tried to connect that group of sort of armed extremists in the Coutts area with the organizers in Ottawa, and yet there was no legitimate link found between those two.

00:08:11.780 But they, Minister Mendicino, repeatedly made that link, insinuating that, oh, there's guns over here and they're connected to here, so there must be guns here.

00:08:18.680 But there was no evidence at all.

00:08:19.900 No, he's a former Crown prosecutor, so he knows the importance of being careful with your words.

00:08:24.240 So it's quite surprising that he was so flippant in that regard.

00:08:27.440 He also said, most memorably, that the police had asked for the Emergencies Act.

00:08:31.820 Yes, that's another thing, yes.

00:08:33.120 You know, which sort of invokes that national security, public safety thought in people's minds, and yet we found out that not a single police force asked for this.

00:08:41.800 And in fact, some are saying now that they never did need any of the powers, as we saw with the RCMP at the border blockades.

00:08:47.340 So, again, another falsehood.

00:08:48.440 So that really begs the question of what else were they not telling the truth about, or exaggerating, or sort of playing fast and loose with the words.

00:08:57.080 And it would be one thing for one of their other policies, I mean, we've come to expect this from the Liberal government not being overly transparent or straight up or honest with Canadians.

00:09:05.380 But when it comes to curtailing charter rights and invoking the most powerful law in the land that's supposed to be reserved for extreme deadly circumstances or extreme national security threats, it just is unacceptable.

00:09:18.760 And it sets quite a dangerous threshold for the future, which we could talk about, which is really my primary concern with this.

00:09:24.060 Yeah, absolutely. We don't want to get to a point where any government, I don't care what stripe it is, Conservative Liberal NDP just uses this as a way to move people in a way that they don't agree with.

00:09:36.180 Right.

00:09:37.060 That's a very dangerous line to cross.

00:09:38.940 It is. It really is. And that's the sort of thing we see in sort of tyrannical authoritarian regimes around the world, not Canada.

00:09:46.100 And so it's quite serious what the actions of the emergency powers allowed.

00:09:50.800 They froze bank accounts of Canadians with no due process.

00:09:53.840 Now, in normal times, police can freeze bank accounts, which you have to go through the courts because Canadians have charter rights that protect them from governments just unilaterally seizing their assets and things like that.

00:10:04.140 But so a number of Canadians had their bank accounts seized.

00:10:07.760 They couldn't pay their mortgages. They couldn't pay their bills.

00:10:10.700 I had constituents saying they were pulling out thousands of dollars, cancelling credit cards.

00:10:15.000 It really drove a lot of fear into the minds of Canadians.

00:10:18.240 I don't know if that was the outcome they were hoping to achieve to dissuade people from protesting, possibly.

00:10:24.000 But regardless, it was a very serious infringement on charter rights if that threshold wasn't met and therefore the justification wasn't there.

00:10:30.460 They also, of course, we have freedom of assembly as a key charter right in Canada that you can go and you could protest on public property at any time so long as you're peaceful and lawful.

00:10:39.080 But that was, they made an entire perimeter around Ottawa where protests and demonstrations have been happening since really the dawn of Canadian Confederation, so to speak, and a very important part of our democracy.

00:10:54.420 And there's protests happening all the time.

00:10:55.880 We see them all the time.

00:10:56.720 Not quite to this scale necessarily, but so to say you're not allowed to gather here.

00:11:01.940 Now, again, that may be justified if that threshold was met, but was it met?

00:11:05.600 We don't think so.

00:11:06.440 So, and the last thing I'll say is the Emergencies Act also allowed them to put almost like pockets of saying no charter rights on assembly here, here, here, wherever they wanted.

00:11:16.680 So the government could have said, oh, Winnipeg legislature, no charter rights for assembly there.

00:11:22.180 You know, downtown Calgary can't assemble there.

00:11:24.820 And so without that justification, that's pretty serious because, again, we value our charter.

00:11:30.160 And to think that they can just unilaterally do that is quite intimidating to think about the long-term consequences of that.

00:11:37.600 Yeah, absolutely.

00:11:38.340 And I think even for the people within the downtown core, we saw some and heard some in testimony talk about their experiences.

00:11:46.140 It's still, it's still, I get that their lives were disrupted and I understand, I get it.

00:11:52.760 But it still does not meet that threshold to bring in the Emergencies Act.

00:11:57.220 And I think that's the point of all this.

00:11:59.400 Did it meet the threshold?

00:12:00.540 Yes or no.

00:12:01.120 Whether or not you liked the convoy or you didn't like the convoy, it didn't matter.

00:12:05.040 Did it meet the threshold to bring in the highest piece of legislation in the land?

00:12:09.220 And I think that still says no, while at the same time it came out in testimony, and I'm sure you know this,

00:12:14.340 that when the province of Ontario declared a state of emergency, they had, the law enforcement did have that power to start moving trucks out,

00:12:22.060 compelling tow truck companies to do work for them to move some of the trucks away.

00:12:27.040 So that had already started in motion.

00:12:29.780 The Emergencies Act really just went way above what was necessary.

00:12:35.620 Well, it's odd to think that, I mean, countless protests have been broken.

00:12:39.720 Of course there's laws on the books that allow police to break up things like riots or tow, enforced tow truck drivers to tow vehicles that are blocking roads.

00:12:48.880 Of course there's laws on the books to maintain law and order.

00:12:51.280 Why weren't those invoked?

00:12:52.360 Well, this is an area of discussion at the Emergencies Act.

00:12:54.720 People aren't quite sure.

00:12:56.120 And I haven't heard a compelling reason of why Ottawa police or the local government here did not move forward with sort of preparing for this.

00:13:03.240 As they saw those thousands of trucks or hundreds of trucks roll across the country, it's quite the phenomenon.

00:13:08.080 I'll never forget those sites like most Canadians. 1.00

00:13:10.680 But again, I think the Liberal government would love to have this sort of pinned on another level of government or this police in Ottawa or the City of Ottawa Council or whatever.

00:13:20.140 But let's remember why they were here in the first place.

00:13:22.980 Why was the Freedom Convoy?

00:13:24.300 Thousands of people mobilized to come down to Ottawa.

00:13:27.840 Hundreds of them stayed for three weeks, rightfully or wrongfully, illegally.

00:13:32.360 We know they were parked illegally.

00:13:34.420 And thousands more donated.

00:13:36.100 Like they raised, what, $11 million within days?

00:13:39.940 Like why did this happen?

00:13:41.720 Well, it wasn't in response to something the City of Ottawa did.

00:13:44.240 It was in response to Justin Trudeau's message during the pandemic.

00:13:47.940 Short and simple.

00:13:48.820 Yep.

00:13:48.940 They were protesting against lockdowns and the harms that those did on their businesses and their mental health of their children and themselves.

00:13:56.280 And they were protesting against being forced to take health decisions that they didn't believe in or trust.

00:14:02.500 That's what they were protesting, which is solely with the federal government and frankly some provincial governments who,

00:14:09.300 although during the two years of the pandemic that those were in force really are being undertaken,

00:14:13.720 were taking direction from the federal government and their health authorities.

00:14:17.580 So I think a lot of the blame should be placed, in my perspective, on the Liberals' lack of leadership or their type of leadership during the pandemic.

00:14:27.000 That's what inspired or motivated or enraged all of these people to come all the way across Canada to sort of set up camp in Ottawa to protest against Justin Trudeau.

00:14:37.400 So the idea that Trudeau would perhaps, they're perhaps trying to maneuver to pin this on Ottawa,

00:14:42.980 or maybe that's what will end up happening with this inquiry, I think is the wrong place in that regard.

00:14:47.380 I think, again, why were they here?

00:14:48.940 Well, it was Justin Trudeau's decisions that brought them here.

00:14:51.120 Absolutely.

00:14:51.600 Well, two things you said there I just want to pick up quickly.

00:14:54.700 The city did have time to prepare.

00:14:57.060 I think what's coming out is they didn't realize the size or maybe the impact that it would have.

00:15:01.780 But if you look at Toronto, when the second convoy started up, that Toronto police were able to,

00:15:07.280 and OPP were able to move the people along and keep them moving.

00:15:11.980 And it lasted, what, a day, I think, and then it was gone.

00:15:15.500 The second point, too, to all of this is that if you rewind the clock, countries like the United Kingdom were removing their restrictions.

00:15:26.500 And at the time, Canada was putting in restrictions.

00:15:30.460 Like, it seemed that they were using the force of government instead of trusting people, trusting Canadians to use their best judgment based on the conditions and the information provided to them.

00:15:40.220 And I think that's what irked a lot of people in all of this.

00:15:43.620 We're just being forced to deal with government that at times was going in the opposite direction in many countries of the world.

00:15:52.060 Right. And again, we don't support law-breaking or blockading of any kind.

00:15:56.600 That being said, I was not surprised that this happened.

00:16:00.520 I think any member of parliament who was surprised that this happened was clearly not paying attention or taking those tough phone calls from their small business owners,

00:16:08.280 from the, you know, widowed women living in tiny apartments that were elderly that were just hoping to die because they couldn't spend any more time alone. 1.00

00:16:17.100 Or the parents who called me whose children didn't want to eat, they developed eating disorders because they had lost complete control of their lives,

00:16:25.080 couldn't see their friends, couldn't join sports, had no outlet, were stuck in front of Instagram all day.

00:16:29.980 You know, it was incredibly traumatizing, not to mention the division caused by mandates,

00:16:34.800 which were certainly supported and talked about a lot from Justin Trudeau during the last election.

00:16:40.340 People forget, but a year ago in Manitoba and elsewhere, you could not have anyone at a wedding, a funeral, a birthday party,

00:16:48.900 a conference of any kind if there was one unvaccinated person.

00:16:52.800 So in Manitoba, if you wanted to have a wedding and let's say your, I don't know, your cousin or your brother was unvaccinated,

00:16:59.000 either that person couldn't come or they were the only one who could come.

00:17:02.400 So imagine the tension that that creates, trying to have a funeral and your uncle and auntie can't come to their father's funeral because they're not vaccinated.

00:17:13.540 Like, imagine what that does and the anger and the fracturing that has in a family.

00:17:18.220 And so I think that all of that combined with job losses and the trauma of the whole experience,

00:17:23.720 I mean, is anyone really surprised that this happens?

00:17:26.460 Does it make the law-breaking justified?

00:17:28.300 I just think it was like an outlet, like a pressure release.

00:17:32.480 Well, don't even forget the prime minister was calling them names.

00:17:34.660 This is another thing.

00:17:36.480 Before the campaign, we don't want a two-tiered society. 0.68

00:17:39.300 We don't want vaccinated versus unvaccinated.

00:17:41.080 Thousands of times he said that.

00:17:42.080 That's when the prime minister, okay, agreed on that.

00:17:44.920 Then the election was called, the one that nobody wanted in 2019.

00:17:49.180 The prime minister's poll numbers started to drop.

00:17:51.920 They're on the free fall down.

00:17:54.300 What does he do?

00:17:55.360 Well, I need to divide the public even more.

00:17:58.300 I need to find a group of people we can turn on and make them the bad people for all everybody's woes at that time.

00:18:05.980 Right.

00:18:06.160 Right.

00:18:06.440 And it was the unvaccinated.

00:18:07.920 And all of a sudden, just like that, he turned.

00:18:09.720 Just like that.

00:18:10.540 And dehumanized people.

00:18:12.560 Painted them as sort of a danger to society and said, I'll never forget when I saw this clip on Twitter.

00:18:17.680 He was, you know, at a liberal rally yelling into a microphone that you have the right not to get vaccinated, but you have no right to sit next to someone who is.

00:18:27.200 That's the most powerful man in the country saying that.

00:18:30.100 What kind of message, sort of leadership is that providing to all the people who follow him?

00:18:35.060 I mean, that is significant.

00:18:36.580 And so what happens six months later, there's this occupation or this demonstration in Ottawa.

00:18:42.960 I think that his actions had serious ramifications.

00:18:47.140 Of course, he can't be solely blamed, but I certainly think he carries the weight of most of what happened and has yet to apologize or live up to it.

00:18:54.920 And all those terrible things he said, I mean, he called unvaccinated people like racist and misogynistic and anti-science and every name in the book.

00:19:02.820 And it's like, this is our, this is the prime minister of Canada.

00:19:06.640 You know, I just, it's, it's shocking.

00:19:09.060 He's supposed to be the prime minister of all Canadians.

00:19:10.660 Of all Canadians.

00:19:11.700 You know, this is the guy who says diversity is our strength.

00:19:15.060 And yet he was so keen to divide Canadians.

00:19:17.920 And we know even from liberal back ventures that that was a calculated decision.

00:19:21.980 Joel Lightbound.

00:19:22.560 Joel Lightbound, yes.

00:19:23.320 Joel Lightbound bravely and famously came out and said, this is like, I'm paraphrasing, but this is enough.

00:19:28.200 Like, this is, I don't agree with this approach.

00:19:30.340 What we did in the election was wrong.

00:19:31.740 And we need to stop dividing people.

00:19:34.080 You know, good on him for coming forward.

00:19:36.220 Yeah, that was very brave.

00:19:37.000 It was very brave.

00:19:38.140 And rare that you see that in a governing party that a backbencher speaks, at least not in the Canada system.

00:19:43.240 We talk about the UK, so this is a little different.

00:19:45.260 Yeah, so I, not to make light of any of this, but I just, I think it's, it's tough to almost start reliving this again.

00:19:51.600 I don't know if others are thinking this, but, you know, that convoy was a sort of a monumental shake in Canada and was a response to two years of trauma, in my opinion.

00:20:00.800 And, you know, now we're rehashing some of that and that can be tough, but we'll see, we'll see what happens.

00:20:07.120 I, I have faith in our judicial process.

00:20:09.520 This is an inquiry that was built into legislation because it's so serious to invoke this act that they've, the creators of this act and what was it, the late 1980s, built in an inquiry mechanism to investigate this.

00:20:22.740 Because any time it's invoked, it needs to have a lengthy inquiry.

00:20:25.520 I think that's fairly, I don't know any other, you know, that says a lot.

00:20:29.220 So, anyway, we'll see how it goes, Jamie.

00:20:30.480 We'll be paying close attention.

00:20:31.360 Yeah, we'll see what comes out of this.

00:20:32.600 We'll see if they did meet that threshold.

00:20:34.720 We'll find out.

00:20:35.220 We'll find out.

00:20:36.040 So thank you very much, Raquel Dancho.

00:20:37.680 Member of Parliament for Kildone and St. Paul.

00:20:39.540 Also the public safety critic for the Conservative Party of Canada.

00:20:42.520 We do appreciate you coming and joining us here on the show.

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00:21:00.500 We'll be back next week at 1.30 p.m. Eastern time every single Tuesday with new content for you.

00:21:05.460 But until then, remember, low taxes, less government, more freedom.

00:21:08.660 That's the blueprint.

00:21:15.300 Thank you.

The Blueprint: Canada's Conservative Podcast - October 18, 2022

The Blueprint： Emergencies Act Update

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