Trudeau invokes Emergencies Act Did someone forward you this newsletter? Sign up here to get it delivered weekday mornings. Invoked: Justin Trudeau declared a Public Order Emergency on Monday, invoking the Emergency Measures Act, saying the move would allow Ottawa to shut down illegal blockades, the Globe reports: âThe federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations. The scope of these measures will be time limited, geographically targeted, as well as reasonable and proportionate to the threats they are meant to address.â The authority, which must be ratified by Parliament, and which only lasts for 30 days, unless extended, gives the government broad powers to take steps to restore order, including new freedom to probe and block financial transactions related to illegal protest activities, in particular those associated with crowd-funding and cryptocurrency, both of which have been used by the Freedom Convoy protesters to fund the ongoing disruptions. Insurance can be cancelled. Trucks can be seized. Tow truck companies induced to tow. Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland laid out the financial hammer, saying Ottawa will immediately stop all crowd-funding and payment service providers including cryptocurrency to halt the illegal blockades. They will now be subject to the Terrorism Financial Act. Banks will immediately be required to report large and suspicious transactions to FINTRAC, the federal agency that detects money laundering and terrorism financing. âWe know these platforms are being used to be support these illegal platforms and illegal activities which is damaging the Canadian economy,â said Ms. Freeland, who is also federal finance minister. The Globe has a story on what those financial measures might mean, and Reuters has an itemized explainer, and a trip down memory lane, reminding us of Trudeau Pere. In the Star, Susan Delacourt reminds us about that time when Jean Chretien choked a guy. Seriously endangered? In Maclean's, Paul Wells gives readers a history lesson on the legislation, the pondering of which leaves him wondering if this is really necessary. So the question before us today is whether the blockades at Ottawa and, if they return, Windsor and Coutts seriously endanger the lives, health or safety of Canadians, or seriously threaten Canadaâs sovereignty or territorial integrity. Do lives depend on using this law? Does Canadaâs independence and survival? You might say: Well, sure they do. This is an anti-vaxx protest, after all, at least in part, and every unvaccinated person is a potential disease vector. As for sovereignty and territorial integrity, well⦠I mean, maybe you could stretch that one to fit? But in deciding whether this law is needed today, itâs worth looking at all the other times previous governments decided it wasnât needed. Five prime ministers have had the Emergencies Act and declined to use it. Brian Mulroney didnât use it during the two-month Oka standoff outside Montreal in 1990. Jean Chrétien didnât need it after 9/11, Stephen Harper didnât need it during the 2008 banking crisis. And Justin Trudeau didnât use it during the first two years of the COVID-19 pandemic, which saw 35,000 deaths and the worst economic contraction since the Great Depression. Offside: Not everyone thinks the step is a good idea. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association said on Twitter that the government did not meet the threshold for invoking the act. Law prof Emmett Macfarlane disagreed. Tucker Carlson told Americans that Trudeau had imposed martial law, and Donald Trump Jr. called Trudeau Castro Jr. Maybe, maybe not: Is invoking the act a good idea? Only time will tell, writes John Ibbitson in the Globe. Don Martin, writing for CTV, thinks Trudeau may be trying to solve two problemsâone to do with security, the other to do with his career. Starving the ringleaders of funds, suspending their insurance and hitting drivers in their big-rig paycheques will do more to end this showdown than bylaw-breaking tickets and handcuffs. But these moves arenât just about boosting police numbers, thinning trucker wallets and ordering reluctant tow trucks to perform haul-away service on the brotherhood. Most of these moves could be done under provincial emergency orders. Itâs another emergency thatâs demanding all-in action by Trudeau â salvaging his leadership. Leaky: Global, CBC and the New York Times all have articles based on leaked data from a U.S. crowdfunding site that raised US$8.4 million for the convoy. Security expert Jessica Davis has an analyis on Twitter that touches on the legal implications of the measure for crowdfunding sites. Four against: In Canada, Doug Ford welcomed the measure, but the premiers of four provinces are said to have opposed it when Trudeau called: Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta. Jason Kenney spoke against it, but, Don Braid writes in the Calgary Herald, that Kenney is not likely to push back hard. Kenneyâs reaction is relatively mild. Thereâs no cause for a federal-provincial war to add to Canadaâs other miseries, as long as Trudeau sticks to his pledge to use the powers only where blockades and protests are intractable and illegal. This is hardly the federal offensive we saw under the War Measures Act, when Van Doos soldiers responding to FLQ violence rolled through the streets of Montreal with their automatic weapons on display. 11 arrests: Kenney praised the RCMP Monday after they arrested 13 people and seized a cache of guns at the Coutts border blockade, CP reports. RCMP Supt. Roberta McKale said 11 of the arrests were made in a pre-dawn raid on three trailers in the Coutts area, where a blockade was set up more than two weeks ago to protest a vaccine mandate for cross-border truckers and other pandemic restrictions. She said officers seized 13 long guns, handguns, a machete, a large quantity of ammunition and body armour. Police had learned of the threat days earlier, she said. "This was a complex, layered investigation," McKale said. "There certainly was a group that came in after the initial (protest) group arrived within days and this action began. It came to a point where for the safety of the members and for the safety of the public we certainly had to act and act quickly." Not reassuring: Convoy leaders in Ottawa shouted down CTV's Glen McGregor when he asked them if convoy participants in Ottawa might also have stocks of weapons. Poilievre clarifies: Federal Conservatives were unimpressed by Trudeau's announcement, the Post reports, emphasizing what they say has been his divisive rhetoric, but leadership candidate Pierre Poilievre clarified for the first time that he opposed blockades, Le Droit reports (translation). Polling Pierre: Speaking of Poilievre, Philippe J. Fournier writes in Maclean's that preliminary polling shows that he has, so far, a commanding lead over other potential leaders among CPC supporters, but it is not yet clear if he could move the needle in his partyâs favour among the broader electorate. What can we conclude from this new preliminary data? First, that the nomination of Poilievre as CPC leaderâstill a hypotheticalâwould not have an immediate dramatic effect on the federal numbers. Not only are the voting intentions with and without Poilievre virtually identical, but even the regional and demographic sub-samples do not show significant movement. Guns to Kyiv: Completely overshadowed by all the convoy-related news was Trudeau's announcement that Canada will provide a $500-million loan and $7.8 million worth of arms to Ukraine, CP reports. The prime minister said the lethal weapons and ammunition are in response to a specific request from Ukraine, which has already received arms from the United States, United Kingdom, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, the Netherlands, and Poland. Trudeau said the goal of the support is to deter further Russian aggression. Unhinged: BuzzFeed's Paul McLeod has a weird rundown of a post-invocation online chat among convoyers and trolls. âStephen Maher | 