The crackdown on the Freedom Convoy should not be a “template for dealing with the public,” says the House of Commons finance committee..Even MPs who supported action targeting political protesters said it must not happen again..“Exercise caution before invoking the Emergencies Act and refrain from using the precedent set by invoking the act to end the trucker crisis as a template for dealing with the public,” Liberal and New Democrat members of the committee wrote in a report. MPs asked cabinet to formally respond to the recommendation..According to Blacklock's Reporter, Cabinet on February 14 declared a national emergency to end the truckers’ blockade outside Parliament. The Emergencies Act orders saw a total pf 230 people arrested, typically charged with mischief, and some $7.8 million frozen in bank and credit union accounts belonging to convoy sympathizers..“This is a dangerous precedent and should trouble all Canadians,” Conservative MPs wrote in the report, adding: “Neither government, law enforcement nor witnesses made a compelling case the situation in Ottawa required the holus-bolus overriding of Canadians’ charter rights from unreasonable search and seizure.”.Bloc Québécois MPs called the declaration a “legislative atomic bomb” that was harsh and needless. “The act states it is not sufficient that there be an emergency,” the Bloc wrote in its own report..“The emergency must also ‘exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it’ and must be such that it ‘cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law in Canada.’”.“We hope that following this report the government will justify its use,” wrote Bloc MPs. “However in light of the testimony in the report we have come to the conclusion the government will not have any new rationale to offer us because there are none.”.One group, the Assembly of First Nations, in March 14 testimony said the crackdown sets a bad precedent. “My concern is the act is a tool and the tool itself can actually name and can actually place labels upon people,” testified National Chief RoseAnne Archibald. “That is my concern.”.“The implications of the Emergencies Act are far and wide and that is why I am standing before you,” said Archibald, adding: “I am a former activist myself and I have been involved in civil actions and charged.”.“It’s very easy for the Emergencies Act to be used as a tool against First Nations people because of systemic racism, overt and covert racism, that exists within financial institutions in Canada and within the law enforcement institutions and even within government,” said Archibald.
