The public portion of an investigation into the first\u002Dever use of the Emergencies Act ended Friday.
A panel of experts offered insight into a key issue the Public Order Emergency Commission will have to decide: whether the federal government has been forthcoming enough about why cabinet felt legally justified to invoke what is supposed to be a measure of last resort.As the Canadian national soccer teams head to their respective FIFA World Cups, Derek Van Diest is on the scene to cover all the action.
“It would be hard to say that it does not affect the ability of the commission to reach a conclusion,” former CSIS director Ward Elcock said, when asked about the impact of redacting documents and otherwise withholding information from the inquiry.tap here to see other videos from our teamThere are, however, issues of national security, cabinet confidence and, indeed, solicitor-client privilege that the government is “unable to make public,” he said.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14 in response to the weeks-long occupation of downtown Ottawa by “Freedom Convoy” protesters opposed to COVID-19 public health restrictions and the federal government, as well as similar protests blockading land borders across the country, halting hundreds of millions of dollars in trade.
That problem could be solved in the future by meeting the public halfway, said University of British Columbia law professor Hoi Kong, whose expertise is constitutional law. “One of the reasons for having accountability mechanisms is because you want the decision-makers, in the moment when they actually have to make a decision like this, to have like a little bird sitting on their shoulder saying, ‘One day, someone who’s not under this time pressure will look at what you’ve done,”’ said Kim Lane Scheppele, a professor at the Princeton School of Public and International Affairs.
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