The failures of politics, and empathy, before the Emergencies Act
a year ago, there was a policing failure. Before the policing failure, there was a failure of intelligence gathering and analysis.Prime Minister Justin TrudeauThere is much to ponder, and some to disagree with, in the exhaustive report that Justice Paul Rouleau has shared with Parliament and the public on the decision by the federal government to invoke the Emergencies Act to shut down the disruptive protest occupying the streets of Ottawa.
Separate from that yet-to-be-decided legal issue is the more fundamental question of how this country became so badly divided that thousands of Canadians evidently felt their only recourse was to occupy the nation’s capital, and that the federal cabinet evidently believed its only option was to curtail civil rights to oust them.On that question, Justice Rouleau’s report makes some critical points that Mr. Trudeau, and all Canadians, would do well to think about.
So did the Prime Minister. As the protesters made their way to Ottawa, Mr. Trudeau called them a “small fringe minority of people” that held “unacceptable views.” But the justice does go on to point out what the Prime Minister and others should have been saying: that the majority of protesters were “exercising their fundamental democratic rights.” Encouragingly, Mr. Trudeau seems to have taken that part of Mr. Rouleau’s report to heart. Queried by reporters on Friday, Mr. Trudeau said he wished he had chosen different words. Yes, there are a “small number of people that spread misinformation,” he said.
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