“Criminalizing Dissent”

The Public Order Emergency Commission, which is led by Justice Paul Rouleau, has heard how the protests fractured supply chains, made a mockery of the capital city’s police and dented Canada’s international reputation. Amid all the revelatory details, Justice Rouleau has said that his focus remains squarely on the federal government’s decision to give itself the power to rule by executive order.

Despite the government’s extensive disclosures, it has not lifted the veil of solicitor-client privilege. The legal opinion that the government relied on to invoke the act remains hidden from the commission, the public and from the Parliament that retroactively voted on the use of the act.

The federal government is already preparing to deal with a new convoy protest being planned for February, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s national security adviser told a parliamentary committee Thursday evening.

Testifying before a special committee of MPs and senators set up to study the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to shut down the protest that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and blocked several border crossings last winter, Jody Thomas said officials are aware a second convoy protest is in the works and her colleague Mike MacDonald, assistant secretary to the cabinet for security and intelligence, has already begun to prepare.

Emails released through a public inquiry suggest federal Liberal political aides were scrambling earlier this year to figure out the extent to which members of the Canadian Armed Forces were supporting the self-described “Freedom Convoy” protests that had gridlocked downtown Ottawa.

The internal communications are among thousands of documents submitted to the Public Order Emergency Commission, which is looking at the Liberal government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to end the demonstrations in February.

How’s this for hypocrisy?

At a time when celebrities, tech barons, and the White House are laying low about the gargantuan anti-COVID lockdown protests spreading throughout China, Canada’s prime minister, Justin Trudeau, is loudly virtue-signalling …

The Defence Department’s top official says he directed the military to prepare to intervene in the “Freedom Convoy” protests earlier this year, but the resulting plans were never seriously considered – in part due to concerns about another Oka Crisis.

Deputy minister Bill Matthews and another top defence official also said the Canadian Armed Forces was prepared to fly police officers to demonstration sites across the country, but that its tow trucks were too big – and too old – to help with the protests.

Matthews and Defence Department associate deputy minister Stefanie Beck made the comments in an August interview with lawyers for the public inquiry looking into the Liberal government’s decision to use the Emergencies Act to end the protests.

That’s so Canada – Our tow trucks are crap.

DOCUMENTS: @ElizabethMay circulated to cabinet false rumours of Kremlin involvement in #FreedomConvoy. "Hair raising," said May, who supported #EmergenciesAct. https://t.co/Y43uQ1RzMC #cdnpoli @POECommission pic.twitter.com/Z52LYm0dVu

— Blacklock's Reporter (@mindingottawa) November 29, 2022

OTTAWA – Social media acted as the “central nervous system” of the “Freedom Convoy” protest in Ottawa last winter, the Public Order Emergency Commission heard Tuesday as it considered the role of misinformation in the lead up to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

The policy phase this week follows six weeks of fact-finding hearings into the events that led to that decision, which included testimony about online threats and the role social media played in organizing the protest against COVID-19 public health measures.

Before thousands of trucks started rolling toward Ottawa last January, a loose group of protest organizers communicated mainly over TikTok and Facebook, the commission heard over those weeks of testimony. Many of them had never met in person until the protest began.

The lawyers representing the organizers of the infamous trucker convoy at the Emergencies Act inquiry certainly didn’t do themselves or their clients any favours over the course of the hearings.

But given that some of the legal team was funded by the Calgary-based Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) that should come as no surprise. Its president, John Carpay, is facing professional misconduct charges following a request for a Law Society investigation into lawyers associated with the JCCF by Manitoba’s attorney general.

One of Canada’s largest credit unions allegedly reported depositors to the RCMP whom it suspected of supporting the Freedom Convoy protests last winter.

Desjardins Group managers sent an email to the RCMP on Feb. 19 disclosing deposit amounts used to pay credit card bills of several of its customers that it believed were spending to support the convoy protesters, according to Blacklock’s Reporter.

“The money is used to pay some bills regarding marketing like signs and paper for the (protest),” managers wrote in the email. “We are waiting for more instructions in regards of the above.”

Desjardins specifically named a couple who deposited $20,000.

The Charter of Rights and Freedoms contains the famous notwithstanding clause. That clause empowers provinces to override otherwise Charter- guaranteed rights. Very recently for example, Doug Ford of Ontario, summoned the notwithstanding clause to “cancel” collective bargaining rights, though he eventually withdrew it. Quebec, as another example, has made invoking the notwithstanding clause one of its favourite jurisdictional hobbies.

The Freedom Convoy may well be the best thing to have happened to Justin Trudeau. The most deluded of the protesters imagined they would be able to force the prime minister from office, abolish the Liberal party and when it was all over they would be able to finally rest and watch the sun rise on a grateful Canada.

His testimony on why he suspended truckers’ civil liberties was ludicrously evasive

On Friday, Justin Trudeau made his much-anticipated appearance before the Canadian Public Order Emergency Commission, where he gave testimony about his unprecedented decision to use the Emergencies Act last February to suspend civil liberties in Canada and suppress the trucker protests.

To the fascinated eyes of the public, it soon became apparent that although the well-coached prime minister was present before the commission in body, in spirit he was with Alice in Wonderland — that magical place where words mean what one wants them to mean, neither more nor less.