The Findings of the Emergencies Act Commission Surprised Me

When the EA commission was doing its work last fall and everybody was building their preferred narratives by cherry picking the parts of the testimony that supported them I mentioned everybody was wasting their time and the final word would go to Justice Rouleau. I further stated that in the end the findings of the commission would be equivocal and that everybody would be able to spin them to their own advantage.

I was wrong. The final conclusions were quite unequivocal. The Federal government was justified in invoking the Act because the situation last winter met the very high threshold outlined in the act to do just that. End of story. I knew that the commission would come to this conclusion but I was expecting some nuance.

What this decision means is Justice Rouleau completely disregarded the testimony of the Convoy Organizers that testified at the hearings. They spent close to a week pushing their woe-is-me-we-were-just-peacefully-protesting schtick. He did not believe a word of it. Remarkable.

He also did not take anything the various law enforcement organizations said either. They all engaged in "cover your ass" operations on the stand and none of what they said appears to have been considered. The same goes for the testimony of the City of Ottawa.

I stated that the Federal government would not have invoked the EA if they did not have their ducks in a row beforehand. So I knew that the final report would find that they were justified in invoking the act but I always thought that finding would be tempered by the testimony of the convoy leaders and law enforcement as Justice Rouleau would be compelled by his brief to consider their testimony. He did and he rejected all of it pretty much out of hand. 

Wow.

The report is also not very good for the Provincial government. But then again the Premier never took the opportunity to put his side of the story into the record. He just sent a subordinate in the person of the Provincial Solicitor General to testify, which did not have the same impact as the Premier testifying. As I stated last Fall by not testifying Doug Ford essentially made the Federal government version of events the only version Justice Rouleau could consider. 

As for the Conservative Party of Canada they are not mentioned in the report so they will not be hurt by it. Throughout the hearings, whenever testimony contradicting the Federal government line was presented, the CPC surrogates in the media kept pushing the "Trudeau government overstepped" narrative but the silence of the CPC itself was deafening. The reason is they knew that if they did speak up they increased the chances of compelling Justice Rouleau to ask that they testify at the commission. That would not do so they kept their mouth shut. 

I did not see it but Pierre Poilievre did have a news conference today where he talked about the commission, after it had finished its work and could no longer call him, but I pretty much know what he said: "Trudeau bad". The guy really is a schmuck.

So this sordid chapter is now behind us. As expected the government was justified in invoking the EA, unexpectedly the commission was unequivocal in that finding, once again Doug Ford has been proven to be incompetent when it comes to actually governing and Pierre Poilievre is still a schmuck.