A week from now, on Feb. 6, the Trudeau government will be handed the report of Justice Paul Rouleau on the invocation of the Emergencies Act. The rest of us won’t get to see it for another two weeks after Trudeau and his team have studied it, dissected it, and come up with a communications strategy to respond to Rouleau’s findings.
There are a lot of problems with this legally, ethically and from an optics point of view.
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According to the Emergencies Act, the government was required to call the inquiry that Justice Rouleau headed up. The law states that within 60 days of the emergency order expiring or being revoked that the government shall, “cause an inquiry to be held into the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued and the measures taken for dealing with the emergency.”
The law also lays out when the report must be delivered. It’s not according to a schedule set by the government of the day, it’s in the legislation. The law states that the report, “shall be laid before each House of Parliament within three hundred and sixty days after the expiration or revocation of the declaration of emergency.”
The Emergencies Act was invoked on Feb. 14, 2022, and revoked on Feb. 23, 2022, meaning that to meet the legal requirements, the report must be before Parliament no later than Feb. 17, 2023. Feb. 20, 2023 is 363 days after the emergency order was revoked.
The House of Commons isn’t even sitting on Feb. 20, 2023, and neither is the Senate meaning the reports can’t be laid before them. Both the Senate and the Commons return on March 6, meaning that if the reports aren’t tabled until then the Trudeau government would have had a full month with the report without Canadians knowing a single word of what is written.
When the Supreme Court rules for or against the government, they don’t find out days or weeks in advance, at best they are briefed an hour or so ahead of time, like the media, in a secure location. While it’s not uncommon for governments to receive reports before they are released to the public, this two week gap far exceeds what is normal and what should be acceptable.
The Emergencies Act, which replaced the War Measures Act and was designed to limit government power and the potential for abuse, doesn’t mention giving the cabinet an advance reading of the inquiry’s report. There is no requirement to give the government of the day a two-week head start which will allow them to prepare a roll out and reaction plan on what is a verdict of their own actions.
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This doesn’t pass the smell test, it doesn’t pass the transparency test but that is hardly surprising.
The inquiry’s role was to determine if the government was justified in using the Emergencies Act. At the end of the inquiry, we found out that the government had their own legal definitions and legal opinion to justify using the act, definitions not found in the very precise Emergencies Act. When asked, even by Justice Rouleau to share this information with the inquiry, the government said no, it was for their eyes only.
Asked about report and the timing of the release, a spokesperson for the inquiry said that Justice Rouleau continues to work on the report but that he has no information on when it will be released publicly.
The public deserves to see this report at the same time as the government, if Trudeau and his cabinet think otherwise, they should explain why to the public.
