A version of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau different from the one that Canadians have come to know testified before the public inquiry into the government’s use of the Emergencies Act last week.
The familiar Justin Trudeau is proficient in the art of responding without answering, of repeating canned talking points like a malfunctioning robot with its settings enduringly stuck on “deflect.” That Justin Trudeau can seem vacuous, occasionally smarmy and often adopts a weird lyrical cadence more akin to a parent reading a child a bedtime story than a G7 leader commanding a nation.
That Justin Trudeau never made an appearance in the nearly five-and-a-half hours the Prime Minister was subject to questioning about his government’s historic invocation of the never-before-used legislation. Instead, the Prime Minister who appeared before the public inquiry was forthright and thoughtful in his answers, conveying a detailed appreciation of the legal threshold to declare a public order emergency as defined in the CSIS Act, which his former public comments on the matter frequently belied.
Hours of live cross-examination could have been politically disastrous for any prime minister, let alone one with a reputation for vapid superficialities and the occasional gaffe. Yet Mr. Trudeau was confident and specific; he identified the activities he understood could constitute a threat to the security of Canada, including the presence of a cache of weapons at the border in Coutts, Alta., and the use of “children as human shields.”
He also attempted to directly address some of the criticisms of his invocation of the Emergencies Act, including the fact that the blockade at the Windsor border was dismantled before its invocation (“There wasn’t a sense that things were dissipating,” he said) and that the use of the act requires that the situation “cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.” (“We kept hearing there was a plan,” he said of the response from three levels of police. “I would recommend people take a look at that actual plan, which wasn’t a plan at all.”)
The Emergencies Act inquiry’s most interesting revelations, as told by its text messages
Mr. Trudeau also attempted to let the inquiry in on his personal thought process for his decision to invoke the act, saying he reflected first on the inputs he received from the Privy Council, cabinet and law enforcement, and then on his own considerations of conscience. “What if the worst had happened in those following days?” he said. “What if someone had gotten hurt? What if a police officer had been put in a hospital? What if, when I had an opportunity to do something, I had waited and we had the unthinkable happen over the coming days?”
Other witnesses who testified in the preceding days and weeks didn’t fare as well. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland had a practically farcical exchange with a lawyer for the Canadian Constitution Foundation during cross-examination, when she was asked several times whether she considered economic harm a threat to the security of Canada as defined by Section 2 of the CSIS Act. Ms. Freeland gave meandering replies each time, never really answering the question.
When it was his turn to testify, Attorney-General David Lametti was made to explain text messages he exchanged with Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino where the pair joked about using tanks to clear protesters. He was also questioned over messages with Quebec MP Greg Fergus where Mr. Lametti appeared to outline political considerations for the government’s timing in revoking the Emergencies Act, saying, “We needed to stay ahead of the NDP and senators were saying that they would vote against based on their view that there was no longer an emergency.”
Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair struggled during his testimony to explain why a request for federal assistance from Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Ric McIver to clear the Coutts border went unanswered for more than a week. He also told a Canadian Civil Liberties Association lawyer that he wasn’t embarrassed about Canada’s inability to control the convoy at the time, before being confronted with text messages to his chief of staff in which he said, “I am embarrassed for my former profession. And worried for my government which is being made to look very weak and ineffective.”
In contrast to all of that, Mr. Trudeau’s testimony left the impression that it was he who was actually the adult in the room (unbelievable as that might be to his harshest critics and to square with his more ubiquitous public persona). That of course doesn’t resolve the central question before the commissioner, who might in the end find insufficient evidence to deem the invocation of the act legally justified (particularly because the legal advice provided by the Department of Justice to cabinet was never disclosed). But Mr. Trudeau’s episode of demonstrated introspection, of thoughtfulness, of commitment to answer the questions before him was noteworthy all the same. How does Canada get more of that Prime Minister, and less of the old one?