Western Standard - SPECIAL BROADCAST： Emergencies Act Report

00:00:00.000 Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Western Standard's live coverage of the

00:00:20.820 release of the report of the Rouleau Commission into the federal government's use of the

00:00:28.320 Emergencies Act, which we like to call the, we like to remind people, was actually the War

00:00:35.720 Measures Act by a different name. This is a coast-to-coast broadcast. We'll be joined today

00:00:42.920 by David Crayton, our Ottawa correspondent, who has covered this extensively. And we have some

00:00:50.560 the guests who we will introduce later in the program but first the thing about the

00:00:57.920 inquiry there's really three questions that it had to establish why did the liberal government

00:01:06.880 bring in something that used to be called the war measures act to deal with what appeared to be a

00:01:14.160 civil protest secondly what were the decision what were the circumstances what might have been

00:01:20.160 weighing on their minds and thirdly did they go too far were the sweeping measures with everything

00:01:31.200 from going into people's bank accounts to monitoring cell phones to bringing out the

00:01:36.560 the mounted police against protesters? Was it all too much? Those are the questions that the

00:01:45.800 inquiry has been looking at, and the answers are potentially jamming for the Liberal government.

00:01:54.340 I'm going to go now to David Creighton, as I introduced him before. He is our Ottawa

00:01:58.420 correspondent. He has been following this process with enormous interest and great skill and

00:02:04.680 dedication. David, what do you expect the commission to say? Up until yesterday, I think I

00:02:14.500 was assuming that the commission was going to basically tell us all that Justin Trudeau had

00:02:22.200 no choice, that he did the right thing. I'm having very large second thoughts about this because of

00:02:29.940 the retirement yesterday of RCMP Commissioner Brenda Luckey. And she seems to me, despite all

00:02:38.360 of her own shortcomings, which are many, she seems to me to be the ideal choice for the Trudeau

00:02:46.040 government to throw under the bus. And as I pointed out recently, the Trudeau government

00:02:52.800 loves to throw prominent female members of the government under the bus. And they're the first 1.00

00:02:58.700 to go, despite Mr. Trudeau's so-called dedication to proto-feminism. But I think now we might at

00:03:08.040 least be looking for some kind of reprimand from Justice Paul Rulo. And I think that reprimand is

00:03:16.180 going to focus on the RCMP commissioner, who clearly did not do her job in briefing the

00:03:24.040 Prime Minister of other options. The Emergencies Act invocation was presented essentially as the

00:03:31.480 only valid option he had to deal with an imaginary crisis. And once again, the fact that it was the

00:03:41.280 RCMP Commissioner, along with the Ottawa Police, along with the OPP, that made this protest,

00:03:50.260 that made this Freedom Convoy demonstration into something it wasn't, like it was an active war,

00:03:57.040 like they were trying an insurrection, that they wanted to bring down the government,

00:04:01.540 that it was a crisis, it was an occupation. All of these words were used. And I think Rouleau

00:04:07.280 is probably going to displace the responsibility of the prime minister to know what is going on,

00:04:14.620 and and he should know what's going on but often doesn't and place that on his advisors

00:04:21.340 principally the rcmp commissioner brenda lucky who's not so lucky in this case yes so let's just

00:04:29.740 say that uh let's just play with that idea well this was a national truly a national emergency

00:04:38.060 Clearly, the occupation of the downtown core of Ottawa by a large group of people with trucks parked

00:04:46.620 there was an inconvenience to people who lived around there. Many of them have been quick to

00:04:51.980 point that out. But it never could have been, on its own, represented as a threat to national

00:04:59.100 security. Remember this act, which we now call the Emergencies Act, was called the War Measures Act,

00:05:05.500 And it's essentially the same piece of legislation, I think, David.

00:05:08.600 You'll comment on that in a moment.

00:05:10.540 But let's just look at what happened on the borders.

00:05:14.560 For a while there, the Ambassador Bridge was under siege,

00:05:18.020 and there was a situation down in Coots, Alberta,

00:05:23.300 at a border crossing where nothing was moving.

00:05:26.600 Maybe those things are an emergency

00:05:31.120 which would justify the federal government securing its borders.

00:05:36.060 What do you say?

00:05:37.200 I certainly think there was much more of an emergency at the border,

00:05:41.620 whether it was in Ontario or Alberta.

00:05:45.540 I dispute a lot of the police allegations

00:05:50.140 that it was the convoy people who had the arms.

00:05:54.920 But the real issue here is that the border problem was cleaned up.

00:06:00.320 Fully one day before Trudeau invoked the war measures, excuse me, the Emergencies Act.

00:06:08.980 And so there was no crisis at the border when he invoked the act.

00:06:14.180 It was a day after.

00:06:16.140 So clearly this was aimed entirely at a bunch of blue collar truckers who had their trucks parked on Wellington Street and were having a great time.

00:06:26.260 And the majority of people who were there with them, including many residents of Ottawa who weren't bureaucrats, were having a heck of a good time as well.

00:06:36.000 I was there every day, freezing my hands off, interviewing people.

00:06:39.780 But I couldn't believe how diverse a group this was.

00:06:44.720 They weren't all a bunch of old white men.

00:06:47.400 There was a lot of indigenous people, a lot of black people, black women. 1.00

00:06:51.480 And, of course, it was an indigenous woman who was mowed down by a horse.

00:06:57.280 And to say that this was really making life difficult for people downtown is absolute nonsense.

00:07:03.140 And there was absolutely no need to crush this with a draconian measure like the Emergencies Act.

00:07:09.880 Right. So just as an aside, David, does the Emergencies Act, as it is today available to the federal government,

00:07:19.520 differ very much from the War Measures Act that was there before?

00:07:22.960 It differs in one primary aspect, and we really haven't discussed this much

00:07:30.080 during this whole period. The War Measures Act was martial law, and it was strict martial law.

00:07:37.920 And I recall experiencing that martial law as a five-year-old in Uplands, Ontario. My father

00:07:45.840 was stationed there and we tried to get into the the base as usual and there were several

00:07:52.160 armed mps with submachine guns pointing in our window and telling us that the entire country

00:08:00.800 was under martial law and there was a curfew all over the country the emergencies act has tempered

00:08:09.840 that kind of legislation whereas it can be localized and it's not strictly martial law

00:08:17.040 you're under the control of the police on that scene but this is there's good and bad about this

00:08:24.480 because although it's not as severe as the war measures act that was created about 1942 it is

00:08:33.840 in some ways more dangerous because it can be more easily invoked by governments like that of

00:08:40.560 Justin Trudeau because they can say, well, it's not martial law. We're not forcing people to go

00:08:46.480 in their homes and not leave. We're just making an authoritarian zone here in Ottawa, or it could

00:08:54.560 have been in Coots. It wasn't there because it was over by then. But essentially what Trudeau did

00:09:00.440 would make downtown Ottawa into a police state for a brief period of time, where the police

00:09:09.120 controlled everything, all the traffic going in and out of that city, and people, I think

00:09:14.440 a lot of people were afraid of that presence much more than they were of truckers beeping

00:09:19.380 their horns.

00:09:20.840 Well, you said you were down there every day, and certainly I recall you writing that

00:09:25.100 and some of the personal accounts that you gave

00:09:28.580 and everybody having a good time.

00:09:31.720 I think there are still many people

00:09:33.220 who perhaps aren't regular subscribers to the Western Standard

00:09:38.540 or who are drawing their main news information from the legacy media

00:09:43.440 who are of the opinion that this was a rowdy, out-of-control group of people

00:09:48.540 who had their hands at the throat of the federal government.

00:09:53.100 what what did you see down there well i saw a lot of people who were helping each other out

00:10:00.620 the food supply was was amazing and they they had a uh they had a fantastic buffet

00:10:08.660 going on at the at the baseball stadium in ottawa for the where the minor leagues play

00:10:14.360 and you all you had to do was drive out there there was ample parking and you could you could

00:10:19.120 eat just about whatever you needed there was no alcohol if anyone is wondering about that

00:10:24.400 i saw no drugs and i saw a lot of people who were very tired at times because they were up

00:10:31.620 early in the morning and up late at night but they looked after themselves and in terms of the

00:10:36.660 of the their conduct on wellington street i did not see any evidence of a trucker threatening

00:10:46.100 or a protester threatening somebody wearing a mask

00:10:50.020 or someone with a sign pushing it too far in somebody's face.

00:10:55.340 I saw people picking up their own garbage,

00:10:58.460 something that never happens, of course,

00:11:00.040 when we have other events on Wellington Street,

00:11:02.520 even Canada Day, it's a mess the following day.

00:11:06.660 But these people met out of their way

00:11:08.560 to avoid being criticized for this sort of thing,

00:11:11.900 that they weren't just a rabble creating a mess. 1.00

00:11:14.940 They cleaned up after themselves. They found bathrooms. They eventually had to bring in their own porta potties because they couldn't use the facilities and hotels that refused to allow them admittance for that purpose.

00:11:27.960 But there was no urination and defecation on the street, even though the city of Ottawa said they were going to issue citations for these offenses, these offenses that never happened.

00:11:37.840 And as we know, there was no dancing on the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

00:11:41.800 Nobody committed any arson.

00:11:44.260 It was all made up.

00:11:45.980 All of these things were completely fabricated.

00:11:48.720 And there's a new report out by a Centertown group, which I mentioned in a recent column,

00:11:55.020 alleging that the truckers were trying to run people down, that they were beating them up.

00:12:02.080 These stories are just so ridiculous because, of course, if any of this had actually happened,

00:12:08.720 I mean, the police would have been on it and it would have made international news because they

00:12:13.200 were looking for this kind of thing. They were looking for the truckers and the protesters

00:12:18.640 to do something violent, unseemly, unattractive, and illegal. And I saw very little of that.

00:12:27.840 You know, David, what you're saying is generating a tremendous amount of comments in the sidebar

00:12:32.880 here. I'm seeing quite a few of them. You know, Trudeau is an authoritarian, Trudeau needs to go.

00:12:40.160 But there's one really, when I had to laugh, our friend and colleague, Arthur Green, who is our

00:12:45.040 legislature reporter in Edmonton, just wants to ask you this, did it seem any safer than life

00:12:52.000 on the edmonton transit yeah it seemed a lot safer than like that's in transit without question

00:13:01.600 having been on the edmonton transit even safer than the calgary transit a lot more than deerfoot

00:13:07.120 yeah but i had never i was out there and i never had any sense that my life was uh was in danger

00:13:16.080 and military veteran yourself david i just seen somebody put up on the screen that uh

00:13:21.200 they left the armed forces when the government decided to start subsidizing the mainstream media.

00:13:27.520 Is that something you left before that was ever a consideration, but would you make that connection?

00:13:34.640 I would certainly make that connection because when I was in, as a public affairs officer,

00:13:41.440 trying to communicate the messages of the military to the public, we always knew that there was a

00:13:48.800 a zone of neutrality between the military and the government, and that we were there not to

00:13:58.040 sell the government of the day's policies, but to communicate what the Canadian Armed Forces,

00:14:05.720 in my case, the Air Force largely, was doing and what those policies were.

00:14:10.280 That line has become completely eradicated under Trudeau, as it has with the police, I believe.

00:14:19.140 The police has become politicized, but even more dangerous to our democracy, as you point out, and as I think this member here, the journalist has become a propagandist increasingly in the Trudeau state.

00:14:37.560 The journalist has been bought off, and media has been bought off by the Trudeau government.

00:14:45.460 We used to just say it was a problem with state media, meaning CBC, but all of this legacy media has become state media to some degree.

00:14:55.700 And if you want a democracy, as I always say, it's not just about having elections every four years.

00:15:02.400 They had elections every four years in the Soviet Union, but they were shams. 1.00

00:15:07.560 What they didn't have in the Soviet Union was a free press or free speech that never existed.

00:15:14.840 And we're increasingly going in that direction in Canada where the journalists are bought off, the media outlets are bought off.

00:15:21.540 And now with these censorship bills being pushed through by the liberals, I'm very concerned about the future of Canadian democracy.

00:15:28.580 Well, and you have every reason to be so, although I do think that we might need to

00:15:32.980 have this discussion about the freedom of the press again soon, because I see the Globe and

00:15:39.780 Mail, which is certainly not a publication that we have ever regarded as the last word on anything,

00:15:45.860 has nevertheless this morning published documents released by CSIS indicating the depth to which the

00:15:53.700 Chinese government was involved in our last election to try and get the result that they

00:15:58.580 wanted. So I don't know whether that's going to cost them their subsidy, but the story is out

00:16:04.340 there. And that was a piece of good journalism. And I have to say, I've seen some good stories

00:16:11.460 out of CBC, despite what's going on. And when they do a good thing, I applaud them. I want to

00:16:18.900 see them privatized but when they're doing their job they deserve they deserve credit and applause

00:16:24.020 for that yep no that that's that's going to be another subject of discussion but first before we

00:16:31.620 it can't be very long now before the uh the release is coming down but uh coming back to

00:16:37.700 the issue of the police you made the comment i agree with you that uh brenda lucky is probably 1.00

00:16:45.380 going to take the fall for this but would it have been an issue if the ottawa police

00:16:53.220 had responded in a different way and perhaps how should they have responded

00:17:01.780 well if the ottawa police had to come down in a very overhanded manner in a very strong forceful

00:17:12.900 manner at the beginning of this i'm not sure it would have solved the problem because it would

00:17:20.100 have looked like the ottawa police were the problem and that they were causing a free protest

00:17:28.100 a democratic protest to not be allowed to function i think it would have turned out very differently

00:17:35.780 but i'm not sure it would have turned out very very much better because the ottawa police

00:17:41.620 i think exercised some restraint at the at the time of the the old police uh chief it was when

00:17:50.180 they brought in uh the this temporary police chief who was who was there until quite recently

00:17:58.820 he decided that he was going to come down like a like a third world dictator on these

00:18:03.860 on everybody and it just made matters that much worse because the police were instantly seen as

00:18:11.660 people you can't trust and as somebody who was as you know in the military for most of my

00:18:17.540 professional career and i worked on the hill i worked within the establishment for basically

00:18:24.260 all my all my life um and i was always a always a hawk in terms of foreign policy but i was always

00:18:32.260 a hawk in terms of the police. I thought the police are always going to do the right thing

00:18:37.860 and you would never have seen me out there carrying signs and placards shouting at the police

00:18:45.620 but I thought the all three levels of police provincial municipal and federal the RCMP

00:18:52.980 were absolutely disgraceful in their conduct and their attitude. They viewed these people

00:19:01.520 as just a bunch of rubbish to be swept underfoot.

00:19:06.140 These were just riffraff. 0.96

00:19:08.420 And this old woman, Métis woman, 0.99

00:19:12.680 who I met at the inquiry and I spoke to,

00:19:17.560 she's still almost afraid to go out on the street

00:19:20.800 because she was mowed down by a police horse. 0.62

00:19:25.160 This is not fabrication.

00:19:26.920 It's on video.

00:19:27.940 A hundred people photographed it.

00:19:29.600 and she had an injury. She broke her collarbone as a result of this, and she was standing on a

00:19:35.640 walker. That should tell any policeman with half a brain, that's probably not the best person to

00:19:41.800 run over your horse with. But these people acted with such violence that it was shocking to me.

00:19:48.500 It really upset my traditional respect for police forces.

00:19:53.780 I'm going to be a little contentious here just for the sake of it, David. Maybe the

00:19:59.180 police, whether we're talking about

00:20:01.080 the Ottawa City Police or the

00:20:02.920 OPP or the RCMP, maybe

00:20:04.980 they were put in a, maybe it wasn't

00:20:07.120 really their fault, because they were put

00:20:09.140 in an invidious

00:20:11.320 position by what? By the

00:20:12.940 government of Canada. I would

00:20:15.060 make the case, and I've actually

00:20:16.940 made it before,

00:20:19.280 that

00:20:19.560 excuse me, that

00:20:22.560 it was actually

00:20:25.140 the actions of the government

00:20:26.920 of Canada

00:20:27.540 that caused this whole crisis, their hard-nosed approach to public policy,

00:20:38.920 lockdowns, mask mandates, travel mandates, quarantines.

00:20:43.780 They created a situation of such resentment among so many people

00:20:48.720 that the people came to Ottawa to say, enough.

00:20:52.720 I mean, if you think about it, how mad do you have to be to book off work, drive your

00:21:01.980 semi across the country at your own expense, stay there at your own expense?

00:21:07.820 And it was at your own expense once the funds were cut off, which was another action of

00:21:14.320 the federal government.

00:21:16.480 People were really mad.

00:21:18.220 So how hard do you think we should be on the police given that they were dealing with a situation that was caused, as I believe the inquiry will find, by the ineptitude, arrogance, and sheer ignorance of the federal government?

00:21:45.740 What do you think?

00:21:48.220 There's no question the government is to blame.

00:21:50.720 You cannot blame the police for what happened because we live in a democratic society.

00:21:56.520 We lived in a police state.

00:21:57.940 Well, yes, we could blame the police primarily.

00:22:00.880 The government ultimately has to take responsibility, which, of course, the Trudeau government doesn't want to.

00:22:07.300 They want to blame everybody else.

00:22:09.820 I think I spoke to police officers in line and they were very uncomfortable with what they had to do.

00:22:17.400 what the orders were however a lot of police officers acted with undue violence and you can

00:22:27.500 talk to reporters i wasn't one of them who got a knee to the head but i spoke to many reporters

00:22:33.060 who got knees to the head from the police this is kind of this kind of activity you expect in

00:22:37.520 third world not in canada and there was acts of violence and we have of course recordings

00:22:45.500 or at least transmissions of the RCMP horse team

00:22:52.320 that was staying in luxury at the Chateau Laurier

00:22:56.200 as they went on and on in their private conversation

00:23:00.160 about how much fun it was mowing down citizens.

00:23:03.900 The sort of thing you might have expected from the Gestapo.

00:23:07.480 And I was disgusted when I read that sort of thing.

00:23:11.180 These are not the kind of police officers we're used to in Canada.

00:23:14.780 They should be professionals.

00:23:17.620 But this is the problem when the police has become politicized.

00:23:22.780 And that's the real danger here.

00:23:24.320 And the police was already in the lap of Trudeau.

00:23:28.880 And when...

00:23:30.520 I'm seeing a lot of comments on the side that the individual police officers,

00:23:37.180 when they, if they thought or if they realized that they were being used

00:23:40.480 in essentially a corrupt manner, they could have said no.

00:23:46.220 They could have just said, well, I'm booking off sick.

00:23:48.460 I'm not coming to work.

00:23:49.640 I won't do this.

00:23:50.720 Is that actually a realistic option for a serving police officer

00:23:55.880 or a military officer?

00:23:58.360 Not in many cases.

00:24:00.220 No, everybody can't book off work.

00:24:02.340 And this was an emergency situation where leaves were not necessarily feasible.

00:24:09.560 So that's a, I've heard that argument from a lot of people.

00:24:12.700 But it is true that if you feel you're crossing a line in your moral life, then you can quit.

00:24:21.220 Or you can take a leave of absence.

00:24:23.300 Or you can make a decision that is going to have negative consequences on your career.

00:24:27.620 And, of course, that option was always open to those who participated in atrocities in the Second World War.

00:24:36.100 they were never forced

00:24:38.840 this is something a lot of people don't know

00:24:40.400 but people in the German army

00:24:42.640 or even the SS

00:24:43.700 were not forced to conduct

00:24:46.520 the atrocities they did

00:24:47.820 they always had the option of saying no

00:24:50.160 and of getting out

00:24:52.080 now the atrocities

00:24:54.840 at that age

00:24:56.360 of course

00:24:56.800 that option never existed

00:25:00.060 but you know I think

00:25:02.260 police officers

00:25:03.900 if they feel

00:25:05.080 their their their personal morality or religious code is being violated they should be able to say

00:25:10.120 no i think it's an unlawful order do you know of any who did no i'm not aware of any that did i

00:25:17.960 know there i know of some uh there was one police officer in ottawa who donated and and she got into

00:25:27.240 enough trouble for that but i'm not aware of any police officer who refused to do his or her duty

00:25:32.840 this. I've just seen one comment on the screen that's validating what you're saying. You make

00:25:40.100 the right choice and you do the consequences. That's a hard way to live, but you wonder what

00:25:47.560 people will be thinking in 10 years' time. Well, we're going to know very soon now, I think, what

00:25:52.860 Justice Rouleau thinks. Just a few minutes now before the report is actually released and we'll

00:26:02.460 We'll be bringing in our Ottawa reporter, Matthew Horwood,

00:26:06.660 for a briefing on what they've got there.

00:26:10.820 Nico, do we have Matthew waiting online?

00:26:14.560 Not yet.

00:26:15.580 Okay.

00:26:16.140 Just a couple more minutes, and these things often run late.

00:26:21.000 Always run late.

00:26:23.200 Yeah.

00:26:25.120 Even, yes.

00:26:26.700 I think where we're going to end up here is that

00:26:35.060 I may be proved completely wrong in a few minutes

00:26:39.740 that the government will be chastised

00:26:44.820 for using the act when it didn't need to

00:26:51.220 that it was all the fault of the police

00:26:53.220 for misreading the situation

00:26:56.620 and misinforming the government, and heads will roll eventually.

00:27:03.680 Some have rolled already, and when the prime minister comes on a little later,

00:27:11.000 he's not going to be terribly apologetic.

00:27:12.880 What do you say to that, David?

00:27:14.760 He's never apologetic unless he's apologizing for somebody else.

00:27:19.800 He loves to apologize for things that happened 100 years ago

00:27:23.080 and for the alleged mistreatment of this group or that group.

00:27:26.620 But that's about all he ever is for an apologist.

00:27:30.020 I do believe that one of the recommendations here is going to be that the act be somewhat watered down in order for it to be used more frequently.

00:27:42.960 And I think this is, once again, a danger because people are reluctant and people were reluctant to use the War Measures Act.

00:27:52.840 In fact, Justin, Pierre Trudeau used it, was incredible criticism for doing that by civil libertarians and the liberals within his own party who thought he was being a traitor to everything he believed in.

00:28:07.620 So really, it wasn't used after that.

00:28:10.320 And it was the Brian Mulroney government that decided, well, we need something, but let's make it a little less onerous.

00:28:15.960 proved to be an action just as onerous as in reality as the War Measures Act was

00:28:24.000 in terms of people suffering.

00:28:26.100 And this whole idea of the government shutting down and freezing bank accounts

00:28:31.780 simply because you donate to a cause that he doesn't like,

00:28:35.900 that was perhaps the most outrageous element of this whole story.

00:28:42.220 But I do think they're going to try to make it easier to implement in the future by perhaps doing a bit of shaving here and there.

00:28:56.440 And that's not, once again, necessarily a good thing.

00:28:59.960 We do not need to resort to this kind of police action every time the government doesn't like the protest in front of them.

00:29:07.760 because next time it could be the protest that you don't like.

00:29:13.860 Yeah, well, that's right.

00:29:14.900 You're in the saddle today.

00:29:16.140 You're under the horse's hooves tomorrow.

00:29:18.020 David, we're joined now by Matthew Horwood,

00:29:20.540 who is going to brief us on what the report actually said.

00:29:23.920 Good morning, Matthew, or good afternoon, I guess, for you.

00:29:28.240 Yeah, good afternoon.

00:29:29.540 Good to be here.

00:29:30.860 Okay, so, Matthew, what did they say?

00:29:34.240 So they said that it was justified.

00:29:36.680 Cabinet did meet the threshold for invoking the act.

00:29:39.380 However, Justice Rouleau said he came to the conclusion reluctantly and he blamed the failure in federalism and of the policing for the situation that, you know, spiraled, descended into lawlessness, he said, and culminated in this national emergency.

00:29:55.760 So, yeah, he went over in very much detail in the 150-page summary that I read over, skimmed over,

00:30:02.600 and he laid out very in-depthly that every justification was met in order to invoke the Act.

00:30:11.700 Well, how wrong we were.

00:30:16.460 We were speculating a few minutes ago that he would not find that.

00:30:20.420 So, for example, we were speaking earlier, Matthew, about the situation on the border in Alberta, Coutts, which was resolved before the border was brought in.

00:30:37.760 It showed that regular policing could deal with the situation.

00:30:41.940 How did he deal with that?

00:30:44.880 Yeah, well, he did mention that, you know, these border crossings were cleared.

00:30:49.840 but they also talked about how that they could happen again at any moment and that the border

00:30:55.580 crossing in Windsor, while it had been cleared without the use of the Emergencies Act, it would

00:30:59.180 have only taken a couple of more vehicles to show up. And it also talked about how the situation

00:31:03.600 was escalating. There were concerns that, you know, protests could turn violent, that more of

00:31:09.780 these could be popping up and the federal government felt they had no choice but to

00:31:13.640 to invoke this in order to deal with it but uh there seemed to be no hesitation on rouleau's

00:31:19.580 part that the federal government made the right choice and he detailed that all in you know quite

00:31:24.140 a bit of detail and we'll have it on the website pretty soon going more in depth to it but yeah in

00:31:28.080 a nutshell there was uh seemed to be no doubt in his mind and i know it's not the outcome that a

00:31:33.820 lot of people uh you know our readers especially were looking for but uh we're just going to have

00:31:37.800 see how this plays out in the coming weeks and what the response is. Matthew, did Justice Rouleau

00:31:45.000 make any recommendations? He did. He made a lot of recommendations. Broadly speaking, they were on

00:31:52.600 ways that the police can handle future scenarios like this. He also made a few on the Emergencies

00:31:59.960 Act invocation itself and how it can be done more appropriately and in a more transparent way. He

00:32:06.120 He also interestingly talked about the bank accounts being frozen, and he concluded that that was a reasonable measure to have done that.

00:32:14.080 Although he had some criticisms with, you know, charter rights being brought down a little bit, applying to joint bank accounts, the absence of discretion being a little bit difficult for people to unfreeze their bank accounts.

00:32:26.720 But again, as a whole, he said that that was an appropriate measure to give, as Christy Freeland said, economic incentives for people to leave the protest and to defuse the situation.

00:32:37.440 Matthew, I understand that you've been drinking from a fire hose for the last couple of hours,

00:32:42.820 and so you may not have got to everything, but David and I were just speculating about whether

00:32:47.740 the act might, he may have recommended that the act be liberalized somewhat, made easier to apply

00:32:56.700 a broader application, take out some of the harsher provisions in it so that it could be deployed

00:33:02.400 a little more easily this we would obviously think was a dangerous thing did you see anything

00:33:08.560 in the recommendations for the act itself that would suggest he's thinking that way

00:33:13.160 i'm going to be honest with you i'm not that fast so i haven't gotten to the exact

00:33:18.460 recommendations that would suggest that but as i said there are a number of recommendations

00:33:23.680 about various aspects of how this was dealt with and i'll have to look into you know going forward

00:33:30.040 how that's going to be dealt with in the future application of this act.

00:33:33.760 Okay. Going to you, David. There you have it. It was all justified. What do you say?

00:33:39.520 I'm appalled. I'm absolutely appalled. And I'm not surprised that Justin Trudeau was whitewashed

00:33:48.740 in this. I am surprised that the system was whitewashed as much as it was. And I'm outraged

00:33:56.860 that Justice Rulo thinks he has both the ground and the competence to comment on freezing bank

00:34:07.040 accounts because that action had nothing to do with the Emergencies Act. That occurred before

00:34:14.540 the Emergencies Act was invoked. And for Rulo to get his fingers into that and to suggest the

00:34:21.180 government now has the right to freeze bank accounts of enemies of the state, of people

00:34:27.700 the government just doesn't like because they're supporting the wrong people, the wrong cause.

00:34:33.640 That is authoritarian. That is something you would find in a tin pot dictatorship. And I think that

00:34:41.480 needs to be resoundingly criticized and made to fall. Tin pot dictatorship. Well, we've got the 0.97

00:34:50.920 colored money uh what does the uh where where do you think it goes from here matthew what's

00:34:58.720 what's the next step well i think it's uh the biggest winner out of this is trudeau obviously

00:35:04.700 um his supply and confidence agreement with the ndp is even more safe now uh jagmeet singh and

00:35:10.180 said that he might think about rescinding that or modifying it with the report found that it was

00:35:15.100 unjustified but it certainly looks good for him now um and i'd say going forward probably going

00:35:20.760 to have a little protest go on on Parliament Hill, but I would imagine it's certainly not going to be

00:35:25.160 of the size and scale. It's going to be quite small. I think a lot of people are kind of over

00:35:30.040 it, and while there be some people upset with it, it's going to be, I think, a small protest in

00:35:34.800 response to it. So do you think it would be overstating the case to say that as a consequence

00:35:41.820 of Rulo's report and the recommendations that it contains, the federal government has

00:35:51.680 got a free ticket to rule as directly and as harshly whenever it perceives something that

00:36:01.180 could be characterized as a national emergency. I'll go to you first, Matthew, and then to you,

00:36:06.000 David. Is this a ticket to do whatever they like? Yeah, that's a good question, and I don't think

00:36:11.260 i have the legal knowledge in order to uh give a succinct answer i do think that the glass ceiling

00:36:16.440 has obviously been broken for this act and you know now that it's been used once if we have a

00:36:20.880 similar emergency it could potentially be used again but i do i don't i i i want to push back

00:36:25.880 i don't think that you know the federal government is just going to invoke the act whenever it sees

00:36:29.640 fit because there we did see that we have institutions in place to hold the government

00:36:34.140 to account and we had a very thorough uh you know commission and report being done to go over all

00:36:39.980 the aspects of what went right what went wrong and what needs to be done in the future so well

00:36:44.040 i don't think that you know we're going to descend into some sort of dictatorship where we're

00:36:47.360 constantly invoking this act in response to every little upset canadian i do think that you know

00:36:52.780 if they do want to use this act again in the future they they've already done it so they know

00:36:57.460 how to how to pull it off and they would potentially be more likely to do it again

00:37:01.500 i see david what do you say well this is the best possible news for people who want

00:37:07.480 an authoritarian government running Canada because this gives them not just the opportunity but

00:37:13.860 carte blanche to do this as many times as they do as they want to so long as they can find the

00:37:20.060 justification and of course as we know with authoritarian governments they can always find

00:37:24.900 that justification if they need to and apparently we have judges in this country he will back them

00:37:30.120 up this really is a sham the whole thing is has been a complete sham but I think in the short term

00:37:36.820 Anyway, this is going to help Justin Trudeau. He needed to bury this Emergencies Act inquiry as fast as possible because it has continued to simmer for the last year.

00:37:50.040 And that six months when he was on display with his cabinet ministers did not look very good every day.

00:37:57.240 I think it was a very bad moment for this government. But as I've said recently, Trudeau has moved on.

00:38:04.080 he is putting all of his eggs in the health care basket right now and he is going to be presenting

00:38:12.200 himself as the savior of health care that that that phenomena that institution that

00:38:18.860 canadians apparently believe is the most important thing in their life even when it's completely

00:38:25.200 dysfunctional even when no amount of money is going to make it work properly and even when

00:38:31.560 we're continuing to wait 28 days for heart surgery, and 226,000 Canadians go to the States

00:38:42.000 every year for operations because they can't get them here in enough time before they die.

00:38:48.600 So Trudeau is going to be the savior of healthcare, the guy who did everything else right, if you

00:38:54.520 don't have a memory that goes back more than three weeks, and that's how he's going to attempt to

00:39:00.060 win the next election which i still believe could occur this year well there's there's something to

00:39:06.660 bet on i got one last uh last area to throw at both of you i'm sure that the people who objected

00:39:16.420 to the presence of the convoy in ottawa and they have their they have many people who agree with

00:39:22.440 them across the country it's not a hundred percent pro trucker even though the western standard is

00:39:27.440 absolutely committed to the cause of freedom.

00:39:31.960 Nevertheless, there are many people who will read this

00:39:34.420 and feel that their views have been validated.

00:39:37.640 But right here in Alberta,

00:39:40.140 my suspicion is that that's not going to be the consensus.

00:39:45.260 Do you think that there is any kind of an advantage

00:39:49.000 that falls to the government of Danielle Smith

00:39:52.380 by having this relatively unappetizing, unapologetic defense of federal authority

00:40:03.380 and how it can be used against ordinary people who just disagree with federal policy.

00:40:10.560 I think she's going to profit from that. David?

00:40:12.560 I think you hit the nail on the head, and I wasn't even thinking provincially until you said that.

00:40:20.240 But this is a gift from Justin Trudeau and the Liberals to Daniel Smith.

00:40:27.380 And it's the stake in the heart to the Alberta NDP because they just love those Trudeau Liberals so much.

00:40:34.900 And that really drives people in Alberta crazy.

00:40:38.620 And I can tell you that Daniel Smith is going to be out there saying you need a strong Alberta.

00:40:44.380 You need a strong premier like me in Alberta.

00:40:46.960 You need the Alberta Sovereignty Act because look what happened in Ottawa.

00:40:51.880 We had a federal judge vindicate Justin Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act.

00:40:58.620 And we're at the mercy of a liberal government can do this again.

00:41:01.820 Use these authoritarian measures.

00:41:04.700 We're not going to take it in Alberta because we believe in freedom here.

00:41:08.120 So this is an opportunity that comes once in a lifetime for any politician.

00:41:15.220 And I'm thankful it comes once in her lifetime because I know she's going to be able to use this to her advantage.

00:41:22.780 And I think Scott Moe will as well.

00:41:25.120 Matthew, how do you think the people at large in Canada are going to take this?

00:41:32.300 Well, I think a lot of people didn't pay really close attention to the inquiry as it was happening.

00:41:36.980 They only saw little clips of it.

00:41:38.860 But I think, you know, they won't look into the deeper details of, you know, just what the situation was on the ground.

00:41:47.320 They will just see the headlines and see that it was justified and it was a threat to Canada.

00:41:51.300 And they'll sort of go with that.

00:41:52.760 What I do question is how Pierre Polyev, the Conservative leader, is going to deal with this news because he did hit himself to the Freedom Convoy early on,

00:42:00.440 took sort of a calculated risk by supporting it before they even got to Ottawa and said you know

00:42:04.720 what during it like I support the individual right for people to protest as long as they don't remain

00:42:10.620 violent I'm curious to see whether or not he will stay on and with that and and maintain what he

00:42:17.160 said before or we'll sort of try to have and distance it because maybe perhaps he doesn't

00:42:21.540 want to be look like he's associated with people who are lawmakers and troublemakers and extremists

00:42:26.800 and all these things that are sort of being described in the report so it'll be interesting

00:42:30.300 to see he's he's holding a press conference today in albert i believe so uh definitely want to see

00:42:35.140 what his reaction is and see how he deals with the freedom movement going forward because it could be

00:42:39.720 a change in the way he goes about it i think we'll just have to wait and see well i mean

00:42:45.980 anybody who who believes that canada is truly a united country at the moment is um has to somehow

00:42:54.700 reconcile that opinion with what has been a highly divisive situation and an exoneration

00:43:04.060 apparently for the government of canada whichever side of this debate you fall on

00:43:13.900 it is going to be difficult to find sympathy with people on the other and i think the challenge to

00:43:20.860 the federal government is to find a way to do that whether they would want to embrace it or not

00:43:29.500 i wouldn't care to guess they have done so well by driving the politics of division and really

00:43:36.700 if you follow this whole thing back to its root cause it started in my view with pushing people

00:43:46.060 too hard to do something that they didn't want to do it brought us brought people to ottawa

00:43:53.100 and it brought out troops it brought out the police and finally a judge to say that this

00:44:00.140 was the right thing to do this is a sad day for canada ladies and gentlemen thank you for being

00:44:08.220 with us thank you for your support for the western standard if you are not a member already please

00:44:15.660 consider it it's the best value that you'll get in journalism and we will see you another day

00:44:22.060 western standard i'm nigel hannaford

00:44:25.100 canadian shooting sports association without the cssa our gun rights would have been taken 0.99

00:44:42.860 And long, long ago, these guys are on the front lines helping to draft smart and intelligent firearms regulations and legislation in Canada.

00:44:52.580 And more importantly, educating the public about how we keep guns out of the hands of the wrong people.

00:44:57.900 We've become a member. It's absolutely worth every penny.

Western Standard - February 17, 2023

SPECIAL BROADCAST： Emergencies Act Report

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