Brian Lilley
Toronto Sun, Oct. 18, 2022
“The law defines a public order emergency as “an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada and that is so serious as to be a national emergency.” We haven’t heard evidence that this actually happened in Ottawa yet, mostly we’ve heard about municipal incompetence, which is hardly an excuse for suspending civil liberties and freezing bank accounts.”
If you were looking to the Emergencies Act inquiry for justification that invoking the Act was needed, you’d be sorely disappointed. What we’ve mostly been treated to is an ongoing parade of examples of how unprepared and incompetent Ottawa was to deal with the convoy.
Mayor Jim Watson spent hours Tuesday detailing the city’s response to the protest that took over downtown Ottawa last January and February.
Watson clearly wanted to do as much as he could during his time as a witness to blame other levels of government, specifically the province and Premier Doug Ford.
“They were upset with the mask mandates, which were primarily, as you know, a provincial matter, but they were upset with the federal government, as well,” Watson said early in his testimony.
Watson went on to say that he believed the protesters would only be in the capital for one or two days, completely ignoring more than a week of reporting otherwise. Are we really to believe that Watson, a smart and successful politician, had no clue what the protest was about or that protesters planned on staying for the long haul?
The impetus for truckers to drive across the country and protest on Parliament Hill was the recent imposition of vaccination mandates for crossing the border. While most participants also didn’t like mask mandates, that wasn’t the driving force behind the convoy.
The convoy had been rolling across the country for a week before it reached Ottawa. There were countless stories on the size and length of the convoy, the massive fundraising effort that saw more than $5 million raised long before they hit the capital.
If Watson, and the Ottawa Police Service, were completely unaware of all this, is it any wonder they had no clue how to respond?. …Source
