Ontario Premier Doug Ford at Queen's Park, in Toronto, on May 3.Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press
Ontario Premier Doug Ford and his former solicitor-general Sylvia Jones are going to court to fight summonses to appear before the commission investigating the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act – after refusing multiple requests to provide interviews or testify voluntarily.
The Public Order Emergency Commission is looking into the federal government’s unprecedented use of its emergency legislation to crack down on the anti-vaccine mandate protests that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and key border crossings earlier this year.
It has already heard testimony raising questions about whether the Ontario government could have done more before the federal government invoked its emergency powers. And on Monday, the inquiry issued orders for Mr. Ford and Ms. Jones, who is now his Health Minister, to appear.
Asked to respond, the Premier’s office referred reporters to Andrew Kennedy, a spokesperson for Ontario Attorney-General Doug Downey, who said in an e-mailed statement that the province was seeking a judicial review of the summonses to have them set aside as “inconsistent with the members’ parliamentary privilege,” a legal concept meant to shield members of a legislature from interference and exempt them from appearing as witnesses in court.
The statement says Ontario has provided the commission with an extensive report on the province’s key actions, and produced hundreds of documents, including key cabinet documents, while offering up two senior bureaucrats to be called as witnesses.
“Overall, our view has always been that this was a policing matter and the police witnesses that are testifying can best provide the commission with the evidence it needs,” the statement reads.
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Commission lawyers said the summonses followed repeated requests for the two politicians to be interviewed or to testify on their own accord, in a letter sent to lawyers for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Constitution Foundation and a coalition of affected Ottawa residents and businesses, all of whom have asked for the pair to testify.
“It was our hope that Premier Ford and Minister Jones would agree to appear before the Commission voluntarily,” commission lawyers Shantona Chaudhury and Jeff Leon said in the letter, dated Monday. “However, given that the repeated invitations were all declined, the Commission has issued summons this day to Premier Ford and Minister Jones pursuant to section 4 of the Inquiries Act.”
Just last Monday, Mr. Ford told reporters he had not been asked to appear before the inquiry. His office now says he was asked to testify only after he made those comments. The commission did ask for an interview with him and Ms. Jones on Sept. 19, which they refused. Commission lawyers say in their letter that they repeated this request “a number of times.” They also said that as of last week, the Premier and Ms. Jones had declined their request to testify “for the moment.”
Commission lawyers say that information they have gathered so far “made clear that Premier Ford and Minister Jones would have evidence, particularly within their knowledge, that would be relevant to the Commission’s mandate.”
Cara Zwibel, director of fundamental freedoms for the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, said in a statement that refusing to testify was “actively obstructing” the commission’s work.
“We have seen this government resist transparency and accountability in many contexts, but this one is a particularly shocking example,” she said.
Last week, the CCLA demanded that Mr. Ford and Ms. Jones testify, citing testimony from Ottawa officials, about the province’s role in the response. In paraphrased minutes of a phone call with Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson presented at the inquiry last week, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau accused Mr. Ford of “hiding from his responsibility ... for political reasons” during the Ottawa convoy protest. The two men also talked about Mr. Ford’s absence from meetings meant to co-ordinate the response to the protests.
Ian Freeman, an assistant deputy minister in Ontario’s Ministry of Transportation, and Mario Di Tommaso, the province’s deputy solicitor-general, have been interviewed by the commission’s lawyers and have been called to testify. So have local politicians, police, protest organizers and several federal cabinet ministers, as well as Mr. Trudeau.
Sujit Choudhry, a lawyer for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, said it will be up to a court to decide whether invoking parliamentary privilege trumps the mandate of the inquiry’s commissioner, Justice Paul Rouleau, who is allowed to “summon before them any person and require the person to give evidence, orally or in writing.”
Mr. Choudhry said parliamentary privilege can be invoked to shield members of a legislature from acting as witnesses in a civil court proceeding – but that a public inquiry was different.
“This inquiry is not intended to determine legal liability,” he said. “It’s purpose is to find out the truth.”
While it was a provincial inquiry, and not a federal one, former Ontario Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris testified at a 2006 judicial inquiry into the 1995 OPP shooting of an Indigenous protester Dudley George at Ipperwash Provincial Park amid a land dispute.
Ottawa NDP MPPs Joel Harden and Chandra Pasma said the Premier’s refusal to testify “just adds insult to injury to the people of Ottawa.”
Interim Ontario Liberal Leader John Fraser, MPP for Ottawa South, said challenging the summonses was wrong and that Mr. Ford and Ms. Jones should testify and “explain to residents why they allowed the occupation to spiral out of control, and apologize for their inaction.”
With reports from Dustin Cook and Marieke Walsh