During the fall of 2022, the Public Order Emergency Commission looked into the federal government’s handling of the Freedom Convoy protests earlier that year. It heard multiple witnesses, including police and intelligence service personnel, Freedom Convoy organizers, Ottawa residents, and city officials. The narrative unfolding before Justice Paul Rouleau betrayed a gross lack of preparation by the Ottawa Police Service. It also revealed the ineffectiveness of communication channels between intelligence brokers at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Privy Council Office, the Ontario Provincial Police, and the Ottawa Police Service. To put it simply, the threat represented by the protest had been severely underestimated.
Such hearings are required whenever the government activates the temporary additional powers afforded by the Emergencies Act. The hearings are meant to ascertain the legitimacy of the government’s decision as well as the way it was implemented by various agencies. It is telling that the act, like the 1914 War Measures Act, which it replaced in 1988, has been invoked only once in peacetime. The original act was used to respond to the Front de libération du Québec—FLQ—crisis in October 1970 and caused a historically momentous scandal. Its replacement has been invoked only once, and that was in February 2022, during the Freedom Convoy occupation, combined with border crossing blockades in Coutts (Alberta) and Windsor.
