What if Justin Trudeau’s Emergencies Act gambit doesn’t change a thing?

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 14/02/2022 (1045 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

It shouldn’t have come to this.

What Canadians, and the world, are witnessing is not a national emergency on a scale similar to 9/11 or that of October 1970, when a violent separatist group kidnapped two high-ranking officials and murdered the deputy premier.

What led Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act Monday — a more democratic and Charter-compliant version of the War Measures Act his father used in 1970 — is the catastrophic failure of local and provincial policing, and the abdication of the Ontario government to do its job.

The demonstrators who blocked the Detroit-Windsor Ambassador Bridge and who continue to occupy downtown Ottawa are well-funded and well-organized. But they are mostly non-violent, seemingly more interested in barbecuing and partying than storming Parliament Hill. Does this situation really threaten our territorial integrity and security? Is Canada’s biggest hammer really necessary?

I don’t want to minimize the real fear many Ottawa residents feel. The apparent attempted arson of a downtown apartment building whose doors were taped shut sent chills throughout the city, as did last weekend’s report of demonstrators attempting to handcuff the doors of another apartment building.

Monday’s announcement that the RCMP seized a large collection of guns and ammunition and arrested 13 people near the Coutts, Alta. border crossing is a reminder there are intelligence reports the public is unaware of.

But watching the staggering number of cops descend on the handful of protesters left in Windsor Sunday, most of whom willingly drove away without charges, shows us that we have laws to deal with this type of behaviour. From Ontario’s emergency measures Saturday to Criminal Code offences such as mischief, unlawful assembly, and riot, the police have the capacity to enforce the law, if they choose to.

“They have everything they need,” Leah West, an assistant professor of international affairs at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs at Carleton University told me Monday. “For (Ontario Premier Doug) Ford to support this especially, I don’t get it. Unless he’s just trying to not be the one to crack down.”

The protests have laid bare perplexing political stances.

Ford, who is up for re-election this June, wholeheartedly supported federal action to step in to establish calm in the province’s second-largest city and maintain the free flow of goods at the most important Canada-U.S. border crossing. To keep, as Ford said — and as he campaigned — Ontario “open for business.”

His stance is in sharp contrast to Alberta Premier Jason Kenney who said the federal Emergencies Act was “not necessary” for his province. “We have all of the necessary statutory powers and operational capacity for enforcement.” Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe, who also opposes the measure, noted that “also police already have sufficient tools to enforce the law and clear the blockades, as they did over the weekend in Windsor.”

On Parliament Hill, the politics are equally baffling. The NDP opposed the War Measures Act in 1970, with then-leader Tommy Douglas arguing the federal government had the tools to deal with the crisis without invoking such a draconian law and decrying the loss of civil liberties. Today, the party backed the Liberals’ use of the Emergencies Act. Its MPs in the House suggested the Liberals should have acted 18 days ago.

The Bloc Québécois, which spent the past two weeks calling for tougher action against the protesters, said it isn’t opposed to the Emergencies Act as long as it doesn’t apply in Quebec.

Meanwhile, the Conservatives, once known as Canada’s law and order party, urged continued negotiations with the protesters and raised concerns using the Emergencies Act would inflame the situation.

Negotiations did take place between one of the protest organizers and the mayor of Ottawa. The result is that now more trucks line the street in front of the Prime Minister’s Office. Another organizer, Benjamin Dichter, suggested if authorities are willing to negotiate the group will “start piling on other demands” such as demanding Transport Minister Omar Alghabra resign because of his background — another example of the racism and Islamophobia embedded in the movement.

Questions about the uneven application of the law have raised concerns about racism being embedded in the police. If the protesters were brown and had long beards would the police stand by while they blocked the Ambassador Bridge?

Is it that there aren’t enough laws or that the laws are not being enforced? Few demonstrators have been ticketed and charged, despite weeks of illegal behaviour. A video of an OPP officer saying he supports the demonstrators “100 per cent” further contributes to the idea that the cops don’t want to police people they see as their own.

Then, of course, there are questions about competency. Ottawa police Chief Peter Sloly has said the city’s cops are doing “everything (they) can.” Though it doesn’t seem that way. Saturday, the police announced they had formed an “integrated command centre” with the RCMP and the OPP. Yes, everyone scratched their head wondering why this hadn’t happened sooner.

This all leads to a more troubling question. What if the Emergencies Act doesn’t change a thing? What if the police chose not to use the new tools at their disposal?

Then, Trudeau will have to do something he really doesn’t want to do: call in the army.

Althia Raj is an Ottawa-based national politics columnist for the Star. Follow her on Twitter: @althiaraj