The Government has looked into itself, and has found it did nothing wrong. Who saw that one coming?
Last Friday, POEC Commissioner Justice Paul Rouleau submitted his final report and recommendations. In brief: the Government was justified in its use of the Emergencies Act.
There has already been significant commentary on this, such as from Convoy Lawyer Keith Wilson, so TBOF would like to make two new and different points.
This is good and bad news.
The good news is that the clear pressure the Liberals and “Laurentian Canada” have exerted on Rouleau to get the finding they wanted is backfiring. If they actually wanted to stay in power, they would have let Rouleau conclude that the Government did not meet the threshold.
Had the Government been found “guilty”, the Liberals could have used it as a rallying call to their base and claim they did what they thought was right to “protect democracy”. They could have created a wedge and drummed up fear that “convoys could now start showing up in anyone’s town”.
Instead, the Report has fallen on its face, with even most MSM outlets not being able to reconcile Rouleau’s conclusions with the clear evidence we all saw and what is in his report.
Instead, the “not guilty” finding is revealing to even Canadians “in the middle” that there is something very very wrong with Canada’s democracy. The Liberals are being cemented as corrupt autocrats and undecided/middle voters are running away from them.
This means we are almost certainly headed for a change in government next election and Trudeau will finally be deposed.
But now the bad news.
Use of the Emergencies Act is supposed to be against an objective standard. Was there, in reality, an actual threat to Canada’s security? Was there actual foreign interference?
Of course there wasn’t. And the Ottawa Police Services, OPP, and even RCMP all testified to this. Not only could not a single police or intelligence witness produce any evidence of such threats or dangers, but they all noted explicitly that they had no concerns of any such dangers materializing in the future.
Rouleau has instead set the precedent so that it is sufficient for the Government to feel or believe that there could be such a threat in the future.
Basically, the test is purely subjective now and any future government will be able to rely on this precedent against any peaceful protesters they dislike because they “feel” like things “could” get worse.
Rouleau’s cowardly decision has set up Canada for a future governance crisis as some misguided government will surely abuse this.
Canada’s next government, among many other things they will need to do to clean up Trudeau’s mess, will also need to take a hard look at the Emergencies Act and revise it to reign in its use and put further limitations on it.