Prime Minister Justin Trudeau testifies at the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) at the Library and Archives building in Ottawa on Nov. 25.Spencer Colby/The Globe and Mail
Over the past few weeks, Canadians have been given a rare, perhaps unprecedented, look at the inner workings of their government. Thanks to the hearings of the Public Order Emergency Commission in Ottawa, they’ve had a glimpse through a spyhole at how authorities responded to the convoy protests earlier this year.
They read about e-mails, texts and meetings among high-ranking government officials struggling to figure out how to quell the protests. They heard what Canada’s top bankers said to the Finance Minister and what an annoyed Alberta cabinet minister said to a leading federal minister. They saw their Prime Minister fend off tough questions about why he used the Emergencies Act for the first time in its history.
All of this was quite new. Government decision-making is usually concealed behind an impenetrable screen of secrecy. Cabinet ministers announce multibillion dollar decisions without telling us how they reached them or what kind of contrary advice they got. Government ministries repel routine questions from citizens and journalists. Courts and police use the right to privacy and a fair trial as an excuse to conceal even the most harmless information. Budget-makers produce spending plans that are deliberately opaque and misleading.
The freedom-of-information system, designed to make governments more open, is hopelessly clogged, as this newspaper is revealing in an investigation called Secret Canada. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s pledge in 2015 to “shine more light on government” remains far from fulfilled.
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There is no good reason for any of it. Government officials often huddle behind a curtain because they fear being embarrassed – and sometimes they deserve to be. One of the points of open government is to catch them out when they do something dumb or crooked.
In most cases, the fear is overblown. Given the flood of material that has come out of the Ottawa hearings, the number of awkward disclosures has been small. An off-colour remark in a text by Jason Kenney, Alberta’s premier at the time. A text from Emergency Preparedness Minister and former Toronto police chief Bill Blair about how he was “embarrassed for my former profession” because of how police fumbled their response to the protests. Nothing serious.
It was a tense situation, and it’s hardly surprising that decision-makers had a few sharp exchanges. By and large, they came across just fine. Mr. Trudeau, in fact, improved his standing with his testimony. In place of the scripted, almost robotic PM we are accustomed to, we saw a leader who was confident, fluent and quick on his feet as he defended his decision to use special powers.
Whether he was right is another question. My own feeling is that as unruly and obnoxious as they were, the protests did not justify the use of such draconian powers. This was not a mass insurrection, even if some of the protesters hoped it might become one. It never amounted to (in the words of the Emergencies Act) a threat to the security of Canada “so serious as to be a national emergency.” Though the protests disrupted the economy for a while and the life of the national capital for longer, other means could have been, and often were, employed to end them.
Others disagree of course. They say the protests were unlawful, dangerous and aimed at overthrowing the legitimate government of the country. Invoking the Emergencies Act was richly justified – and it worked.
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We could argue all day about that. What should be beyond argument in a democracy is the value of openness. The wise drafters of the Emergencies Act made sure that any government that took the grave step of triggering it would have to make a thorough accounting of the decision after the fact. That’s just what we got in this inquiry.
The result was a moment unlike any Canada has seen in recent memory. The brightest of spotlights was trained on the government’s every move. Its top officials had to submit to acute questioning about why they did what they did. The documents and advice that guided them was laid out for all to see.
No one died. No one’s reputation was ruined. It barely hurt at all. In fact, it often helped the government’s case.
Democracy gained in the process. For once, Canadians saw how the people they elect actually do their jobs. Shouldn’t it always be that way?