“Well, this is fun.
The government of Canada invoked the Emergencies Act, the greatest of all overrides of Canadian civil liberties, over a misunderstanding. A miscommunication. A lapsus linguae, or as Maxwell Smart would put it, the old slip-of-the-tongue trick.
Nothing deliberate mind you. Just a bit of sloppy phrasing. Could happen to anybody. Even to a minister of public safety of the government of Canada.
After all, what’s public safety? A minor portfolio at best. Not like some really central cabinet office like, say, the now-defunct ministry of middle-class prosperity. That minister had real burdens. She had to keep track of whether Mr. and Mrs. Middle Class could still afford to go for genuine Egyptian cotton sheets or sheepishly downgrade to knock-offs from China. Or whether getting the new Tesla, even with a government subsidy, would chop some time off the family jaunt to St. Pete’s.
Now that was responsibility. That was real stress.
But still. By invoking the Emergencies Act, the government gave itself unlimited powers, gave the police a pass on due process, gave the banks authority to freeze the bank accounts of Canadian citizens, and froze funds donated to protesters.
And the minister of public safety, Marco Mendicino, unequivocally stated, asserted, testified that he had been requested by two police forces to invoke the act. He did so to the special parliamentary committee holding an inquiry into the use of the act. He told it that the government had been in regular consultation with law enforcement, including the RCMP, during February’s protest in Ottawa.
He said he had received advice from them. From his very own ministerial mouth he testified that, “The advice we received was to invoke the Emergencies Act.”
And when you get advice from law enforcement, including the RCMP, to bring out the dragon — well, that’s when you hear the terrible flapping of its impatient wings.
But law enforcement didn’t give such advice. Both RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki and Ottawa Police Chief (interim) Steve Bell have very clearly testified that they did not ask for the Emergencies Act to be invoked.
I’m averse to being picky, but I think there is some slight difference between not asking for the act and asking for the act.
Yesterday, Mendicino’s own deputy minister, Rob Stewart, clarified what the minister actually wanted to say when he said, “The advice we received was to invoke the Emergencies Act.” What he meant to say, testified his deputy minister, was that was not “the advice” he had received. He did say that it was, but that was not what he wanted to say. And what he wanted to say, is not what he said. There are days when you yearn for the clarity of mud.
And in another act of clairvoyance into his minister’s mind, Stewart said Mendicino didn’t mean police directly asked for the law to be used.
Which means, we have to suppose, that the police “indirectly” asked for it. Minor difference — potato, potahto. After all, it’s only about the Emergencies Act and the suspension of civil liberties, nullification of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The kind of thing you hint at, or leave open to a little mind reading.
The deputy minister was very much clearer than his minister on what his minister meant to say: “I believe that the intention that he was trying to express was that law enforcement asked for the tools that were contained in the Emergencies Act.”
This is a great help. The police did not want the Emergencies Act per se. They just wanted its powers.
On a mundane level it’s very like a situation I often face myself. I go to the grocery to buy some beans. Beans are great on toast, by the way. They give me a tin of Libby’s (my favourite). And then I have to explain, “I didn’t ask for a tin of beans. I only wanted what was in the tin, you ninny.”
Purely a side question, did Mendicino also tell Jagmeet Singh that the police had advised him to invoke the Emergencies Act? And was it on that basis that the once NDP leader, now co-PM, voted to allow the invocation?
So here we are. The stumbling statutory inquiry into the invocation of the Emergencies Act has revealed the police didn’t ask for it; that, according to the deputy minister of public safety, the minister said some things he didn’t mean to, or didn’t say some things he meant to; and that the widest possible powers were given to law enforcement on the basis of truly gruesome miscommunication.
What to say? Well, it’s a good time to visit Chile, I suppose. That is, if you don’t have to leave (or come back) via Pearson.
The next few days will tell the tale–so stay tuned.
