Canada is lifting the emergency powers it enacted more than a week ago to get street protests under control, with Prime Minister Justin Trudeau saying the unprecedented authority is no longer needed.
His government invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act after hundreds of semis and other heavy vehicles blockaded the downtown of Canada’s capital city for three weeks. The demonstration in Ottawa sparked offshoots that shut down key U.S. border crossings, including the Ambassador Bridge to Detroit.
“Today, after careful consideration, we’re ready to confirm that the situation is no longer an emergency,” Trudeau said alongside his attorney general and other top ministers in Ottawa on Wednesday. “We are confident that existing laws and bylaws are now sufficient to keep people safe.”
The legislation gave authorities financial tools to cut off funding to the protesters and compel towing firms to clear out the vehicles, among other measures. Canadian banks froze about $7.8 million Canadian ($6.1 million U.S.) in just over 200 accounts under the emergency powers, government officials told lawmakers Tuesday.
Trudeau said the emergency powers would be formally repealed “in the coming hours,” once the governor general signed off on it. A spokesperson for the Ontario government said the provincial state of emergency would also be lifted shortly.
Over the weekend, a large deployment of police sourced from around the country cleared Ottawa’s downtown streets of vehicles and protesters, although some demonstrators relocated to encampments outside the city.
Trudeau said “the threat continues” of more illegal blockades, but that briefings he’s received from public safety officials gave him “a high level of confidence that the existing tools that police forces have across the country will be sufficient to deal with further disruptions.”
Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland said banks have already started the process of unfreezing accounts now that the blockades are over, but added that some bank accounts could stay frozen under other court orders not related to the emergency powers.
The prime minister announced on Feb. 14 that he was invoking the emergency powers, and they were formally enacted the next day. The 34-year-old legislation — a less-draconian version of powers used by Trudeau’s father, Pierre, to crush a separatist rebellion in 1970 — gave federal officials sweeping authority to handle an emergency that they said lower levels of government couldn’t handle under existing laws.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and other groups have already challenged the use of the emergency law in court, arguing the trucker-led protest against vaccine mandates and other COVID-19 restrictions doesn’t meet the threshold.
Trudeau, however, had been coming under increasing public pressure to take action after Ottawa’s municipal police force was either unwilling or incapable of cracking down on raucous demonstrators and removing trucks from the streets. Ottawa’s police chief resigned the day the emergency powers came into effect.
The Ottawa City Council was told Wednesday that policing and managing the occupation could eventually cost taxpayers $30 million as the municipality maintains a heavy police presence and multiple checkpoints to prevent trucks from reentering downtown. Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson said the city will seek to recoup the costs from the provincial and federal governments.
Although multiple levels of government were criticized for mishandling the occupation of Ottawa and the border blockades, the blame is unlikely to fall on Trudeau and his Liberal Party, according to the head of Vancouver-based polling firm the Angus Reid Institute
“I do not see the prime minister suffering from this politically,” Shachi Kurl said by phone. “Whereas this could have been a political liability for him, it won’t be because the majority of Canadians wanted to see action on this. They were fed up with the protesters.”
She pointed to a mid-February poll showing that although 65% of respondents believed Trudeau may have inflamed the situation with divisive comments, even more — nearly 70% — supported police or even military action to end the blockades. Kurl added that the opposition Conservatives, who were divided on whether to support the protests or call for calm, were ineffective at using the issue to hammer Trudeau.
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