It would never have occurred, the kerfuffle that’s going on in Ottawa this fall, all the finger-pointing, buck-passing and blame-evading, if the truckers and their 18-wheelers had staged their protest a couple of decades ago – in, let’s say, October 1970, when an earlier Trudeau confronted the kidnappers and murderers of the Front de libération du Québec.
The only tool available to Pierre Trudeau was a sledgehammer, the 1914 War Measures Act, employed in two world wars but never before (or since) in peacetime. He reached for the sledgehammer and, as the WMA stipulated, declared that the Governor in Council (his cabinet) had “conclusive evidence” of an insurrection, “real or apprehended.”
Equipped with the arbitrary powers bestowed by the act – arrest, detention without trial, deportation, censorship, control of transportation and ports, and seizure of private property – the first Trudeau called out the army to round up FLQ members, its sympathizers and anyone else who got in the way. He made short work of the FLQ.
Pierre Trudeau didn’t have to consult anyone beyond the cabinet. Nor was he obligated to disclose his “conclusive evidence” (if any) of an insurrection (and he didn’t). He may have been the prime minister who had invented the “Just Society” a couple of years previously, and who would go on to introduce the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, but in 1970 he was not brooking any bleeding hearts or weak-kneed snivellers. One can only imagine the contempt he would laser at the whiners of today who protest being told to get vaccinated during a deadly pandemic.
Post-1970, members of Parliament spent 18 years, off and on, trying to design a better sledgehammer. They eventually wrote the Emergencies Act in 1988. Given its first workout in February this year, the EA is a different sort of hammer, a rubber hammer. Where the War Measures Act ran to just over two pages in the statute books, the Emergencies Act runs to 35. The bulk of it is given to defining in detail four different categories of emergencies and to establishing sets of rules that, while intended to prevent the abuse of emergency powers, do more to hogtie the government.
Before Justin Trudeau could declare a national emergency, he had to consult the premiers of the provinces and territories, all 13 of them. Then he had to accept “the supervision of Parliament,” and to introduce motions for each house to vote approval or disapproval of his use of the Emergencies Act. He had to commit the government to not abridge any of the rights set out in his father’s charter. He had to report back to Parliament. When the emergency powers were discontinued, he was obligated by a provision of the EA to defend the government’s actions to a joint all-party review committee (which – surprise! – produced more partisan bickering than useful information).
Finally, the act required that an independent inquiry be held into the circumstances that led to the emergency and the measures taken to deal with it. This is the inquiry headed by Ontario judge Paul Rouleau that is generating the kerfuffle in Ottawa this October. The retroactive transparency it provides may be the only useful outcome of the Emergencies Act experience. For example, we learned that the Ontario Provincial Police intelligence bureau had advance information of the timing, size and intentions of the “Freedom Convoy.” But the warnings did not get passed to authorities who could have prevented the occupation of Ottawa and the massed closure of border points.
Why? Because Ontario Premier Doug Ford was playing politics. In February, his eye was already fixed on the provincial election that was coming in June. Rather than risk offending the defenders or critics of the convoy by taking a stand, the coward went into hiding until the coast was clear.
Yes, Ontario voters will have an opportunity to give Ford his comeuppance. Mark your calendars: June 2026.
Cambridge resident Geoffrey Stevens is an author and former Ottawa columnist and managing editor of the Globe and Mail and Maclean’s. He welcomes comments at geoffstevens40@gmail.com