Federal government set to deliver update on Emergencies Act report’s recommendations

The federal government is expected to deliver an update this morning on which recommendations it will implement — or ignore — from the report of the federal inquiry into the government’s controversial decision to invoke the Emergencies Act in early 2022.

As required by law, an inquiry examined the government’s decision to use the the Emergencies Act to declare a public order emergency and clear the convoy protests that barricaded the streets around Parliament and blocked international border crossings.

By invoking the act, the federal government gave law enforcement extraordinary powers to remove and arrest protesters — and gave itself the power to freeze the finances of those connected to the protests.

Inquiry Commissioner Paul Rouleau ultimately determined that the federal government had met the threshold needed to invoke the never-before-used legislation, but suggested the volatile situation could have been avoided had it not been for “a series of policing failures.”

“Lawful protest descended into lawlessness,” Rouleau wrote.

His report made 56 recommendations to improve intelligence sharing, police response to wide-scale protests and the Emergencies Act itself.

Rouleau ordered the government to respond to those recommendations within 12 months.

Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc is set to deliver short remarks and take questions from reporters beginning at 9 a.m. ET.

After Rouleau’s inquiry report was released, the Federal Court issued a starkly different opinion on the government’s use of the Emergencies Act.

Earlier this year, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and infringed on protesters’ Charter rights.

He wrote that while the protests “reflected an unacceptable breakdown of public order,” the invocation of the Emergencies Act “does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility.”

The federal government has since filed an appeal of that decision, arguing the court applied the reasonableness standard “in an incorrect manner” and that it adopted an “overly narrow articulation” of the Charter of Rights.