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The trucker's protest against vaccine
mandates, vilified by Mr. Trudeau as “racist” and “violent,” has been peaceful,
but not every peaceful protest is legal. Blocking roads and border crossings
disrupt lives and commerce. The government’s job is to maintain public order while
respecting civil liberties.
Canada has failed on both scores. For
weeks authorities tried to wish away the problem. When that failed, Mr. Trudeau
overreached, invoking new powers before Canadian jurisdictions had tried to
enforce existing law. Ottawa police chief Peter Sloly was a progressive reformer. He
criticizes the “reactive enforcement model” of policing, and when truckers took
over his downtown, he failed to react. Mr. Sloly resigned Tuesday.
On Thursday Ottawa police, with
provincial and federal help, finally came out in numbers, blocked highway
exits, set up a perimeter and checkpoints and arrested blockade leaders. All of
this could have been done under existing law. On Friday police began mopping up
the protests methodically, with occasional scuffles and use of pepper spray.
This too could have been done, albeit differentiating between the lawful and
unlawful, and without threatening media with arrest for covering
the action.
Mr. Trudeau justifies the
“public-order emergency” by inflating the protest into a terrorist plot to
overthrow the government. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association disagrees and
sued Thursday. It says the standards for an emergency— “threat or use of acts
of serious violence against persons or property” that “seriously endangers the
lives, health or safety of Canadians” beyond “the capacity or authority of a
province to deal with it”—are not met.
Protests aren’t emergencies, and
Western leaders had better get used to handling civil disobedience firmly
without traducing civil liberties. Mr. Trudeau criminalized a protest movement,
deputizing financial institutions, without due process or liability, to find
and freeze personal accounts of blockaders and anyone who helps them. These
extraordinary measures are a needless abuse of power.
Toronto limited the problem by
closing downtown roads. Blockades at crucial border crossings were allowed to
drag on and cost the North American auto industry hundreds of millions of dollars.
Yet when police finally acted, border blockades dispersed peacefully, no
emergency powers were needed. One ended with handshakes between
police and protesters.
Weak responses to civil disobedience
have hurt Canada for years. New gas pipelines are increasingly stymied by
blockades, often by green or aboriginal activists. On Thursday men wielding
axes attacked a pipeline
drill site and its workers in British Columbia. That’s worse than anything the
truckers have done.
In early 2020 Mr. Trudeau urged
dialogue with pipeline blockaders. Facing Black Lives Matter protests in
violation of Covid rules in June 2020, Mr. Trudeau joined in. But with the
truckers, the Prime Minister refused to meet or compromise. Even as province
after province ends Covid restrictions, he drags his feet.
When the Emergencies Act was first
passed, critics were assured “emergency
powers can only be used when the situation is so drastic that no other law of
Canada can deal with the situation.” In abusing these powers for a
nonemergency, Mr. Trudeau crossed a democratic line. Canadians wanted the
blockades to end, but it never should have come at the expense of the rule of
law.
