Major Canadian media outlets spent much of Monday condemning leftist Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for pushing a vote in Parliament to approve the unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act to shut down protests tied to the Freedom Convoy movement.
Lawmakers voted to grant Trudeau sweeping, never-before-used powers under the Emergencies Act late Monday despite the fact that no active Freedom Convoy protests currently exist anywhere in Canada, leaving unclear what “emergency” Trudeau is using the Emergencies Act to address.
Trudeau initially invoked the Act last week, allowing police to respond to the largest iteration of the Freedom Convoy, occupying downtown Ottawa for nearly a month, with violent repression. The protest was overwhelmingly peaceful throughout its existence – consisting of dancing, children’s activities, barbecues, and hot tub meetings. The only significant instances of violence occurred after Trudeau invoked the Act as police trampled protesters with horses and beat them in the streets.
The Freedom Convoy is a series of protests against the violations of the freedoms of assembly, religion, and medical freedom to contain the Chinese coronavirus pandemic. Protesters are calling for an end to vaccine and mask mandates, business lockdowns, and limitations on the rights of children to go to school. Trudeau has called the protesters “fringe” “tinfoil hat” wearers akin to Nazis and supporters of the defunct American Confederacy. He has expanded that criticism to conservative politicians, going so far as to claim Conservative Party member of Parliament Melissa Lantsman, a descendent of Holocaust survivors, “stands with Nazis” for opposing the use of emergency powers.
A woman crosses the street in front of vehicles parked as part of the trucker protest, Tuesday, Feb. 8, 2022 in Ottawa. (Adrian Wyld /The Canadian Press via AP)
Major Canadian outlets published commentary on Monday revealing increasing impatience with Trudeau’s handling of the issue.
“Pressed hard for an Emergencies Act justification with the protests gone, border blockades down and convoy leaders in custody, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reached deep into his leadership vacuum for rationalizations,” CTV News’ Don Martin quipped. “The emergency demanding the unprecedented use of the Act was … hesitant tow truck drivers, the prime minister declared.”
Prior to the invocation of the Act, local tow truck drivers in Ottawa had refused police requests to tow 18-wheelers out of the downtown area. The trucks had parked there, blocking the roads, as a form of peaceful protest.
Martin described the vote to approve the Emergencies Act as “obsolete” and “an Emergencies Act in search of an emergency,” noting it was “introduced two weeks too late and approved on Monday night by a vote of 185 to 151, two days after the inspiration for the Act had left the city.” Trudeau, he concluded, had created “an emergency about nothing.”
Martin predicted Trudeau would continue to tank in the polls following the use of the Act.
“For all these flaws and faults framed by his moistly delivered repetitive geyser of rhetorical babble, his reputation has taken a hard hit,” Martin wrote. “As the convoys retreated, they left behind smoldering wrecks in Canada’s political leadership. Removing them may be the most legitimate emergency use of tow trucks.”
The editorial boards of the Globe and Mail and Toronto Star, newspapers that had shown no sympathy for the Freedom Convoy, expressed similar frustrations on Monday.
“A week ago, when the Trudeau government activated the never-before-used law, there were compelling arguments for and against its use,” the Globe and Mail posited. “But for MPs and senators, the question of what was justified, seven long days ago, is now moot. A week is a long time in politics.”
Police face off with demonstrators participating in a protest organized by truck drivers opposing vaccine mandates on February 19, 2022 in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. (Photo by Scott Olson/Getty Images)
“A week ago, the only significant and continuing incident of persistent lawlessness was the park-in on Parliament Hill. It was illegal and it had to be ended. But did it constitute a once-in-a-generation national emergency?” the editors asked. “Even that is now moot, the protestors and their trucks having been removed on the weekend.”
“As such, the question before Parliament is not: ‘Was Canada facing an unprecedented national emergency, a week ago?’ It is rather: ‘Is Canada facing an unprecedented national emergency, today?'” the editorial argued.
Similarly, the editors of the Toronto Star questioned on Monday “whether the powers of the federal Emergencies Act were needed to clear the streets of Ottawa,” much less after that clearing occurred.
The Star praised the police brutality this weekend as “an impressive display of both force and restraint.” Nonetheless, the editors wrote, “it’s possible to oppose the goals and conduct of the convoy protesters strongly, and still worry that reaching for the most extreme federal emergency power sets a worrisome precedent.”
The Edmonton Journal, a newspaper that had published an opinion piece comparing the peaceful Ottawa protests with the January 6, 2021, riot in Washington, DC, also complained this week that there was no good reason to use the Emergencies Act for the first time in history.
Snow falls around a demonstrator waving a flag during a protest by truck drivers over pandemic health rules and the Trudeau government, outside the parliament of Canada in Ottawa on February 17, 2022. (Photo by ED JONES/AFP via Getty Images)
“That the federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to remove maybe 200 remaining protestors — since the other border protests had already been removed before the unprecedented invocation of this law — is proof that it was not needed,” columnist Licia Corbella wrote.
The resistance to Trudeau’s unprecedented measure is notable because many of these publications were openly hostile to the protest movement, objecting that Ottawa residents had been inconvenienced and buying into unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that former American President Donald Trump was somehow behind the anti-mandate movement.
Polls prior to the invocation of the Emergencies Act found growing discontent with Trudeau on his side of the political aisle, particularly among those on the left who wanted him to act more directly to end the protests. One poll found 63 percent of voters were less likely to support Trudeau based on his handling of the Freedom Convoy, even as pluralities expressed opposition to the protests within the same group of respondents.