Andrew Allison is a philosophy PhD student at the University of Calgary.The invocation of the Emergencies Act by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau returns Canadians to the great October Crisis of 51 years ago where none other than Trudeau’s father, the Right Honourable Pierre Elliot Trudeau, enacted the Act’s predecessor, the War Measures Act, after the kidnapping of James Cross and Pierre Laporte by members of the Front de libération du Québec. What will these new powers granted to the federal government mean for Canadians? Will the actions of his father (that is, nearly 500 arrests without due process) be an indication of the extent Trudeau Jr. may take his new emergency powers? We’ll ‘just watch him’ I suppose..One of the powers that the Act gives to the federal government is the ability to order “the authorization of or direction to any person, or any person of a class of persons, to render essential services of a type that that person, or a person of that class, is competent to provide and the provision of reasonable compensation in respect of services so rendered.” According to security expert and senior fellow with the Centre for International Governance Innovation, Wesley Wark, this includes the ability to, “for example, order tow truck companies to perform essential service in removing trucks blocking the downtown core.” Failure to comply with such an order could result in up to five years imprisonment..So horrific is this provision that it amounts to the following: It gives the government the ability to temporarily enslave Canadian tow truck drivers. Though inordinately less pernicious than slavery of antiquity or in the Americas not two centuries ago, it is slavery nonetheless..For what is slavery if not involuntary labour? If you accept that involuntary labour — that is, labour which would not be voluntarily undertaken if it were not for an intervening threat of violence — is a sufficient condition for slavery, then it’s impossible not to view this provision as providing for the enactment of slavery of tow truck drivers. The Act enables the government to tell tow truckers the following: “You will do as we say and tow trucks from Ottawa. Since, as we have seen, you will not do so voluntarily, we will compel you to do so by threat of violence. That is, if you do not do as we say, we will take you — by force — and keep you imprisoned in a cage for up to five years.”.I can do no better than to quote the great American economist and philosopher Murray Rothbard who asked the same of compulsory jury duty: “What is this if not slavery, if not involuntary servitude?”.The act makes room for “reasonable” compensation for tow truck drivers..“Reasonable,” of course, does not mean ‘that which the tow truck drivers are willing to accept.’ If it did, then there would be no need for such compulsion. As we have already seen by their refusal to do the federal government’s bidding, tow truck drivers are not willing to exchange their services for whatever compensation the government has already offered them. Thus, the government has given itself the power to compel the tow truck drivers to do as they are told by force..This is not the same as purchasing services on the market. Far from it. If it were the same then I might go to McDonald’s, the dry cleaners, or a mechanic and demand they make me a burger, clean my clothes, or fix my car and if they do not, I will send armed men to imprison them in a cage for up to five years; the amount to be paid for services rendered to be determined by me at a future date. Far from anything resembling a market transaction, this is precisely the situation tow truck drivers now face..How far will Trudeau go? It’s not yet clear. But the powers which the federal government has relegated to itself already include at least one which should be of great concern for Canadians..Andrew Allison is a philosophy PhD student at the University of Calgary
