TEHRAN- Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has attended a public hearing to defend his declaration of invoking the country’s emergency powers for the first time in the nation’s history to deal with protesters. Critics say the PM and the country have much to explain over Ottawa’s abysmal human rights record.
Trudeau’s highly anticipated testimony ended six weeks of public hearings that disclosed the thought process of the government on how to crackdown on protesters earlier this year.
Earlier this year, Canadian protesters, many of them truckers in the form of a convoy, hit the streets in opposition to the government’s Covid-19 restrictions. The peaceful protests proved popular as, over the weeks, they expanded in size and inspired similar demonstrations in other countries. Families brought their children to attend the demonstrations, which illustrates the peaceful nature of the rallies.
On February 14, Trudeau took a very unprecedented step by declaring a state of emergency for the first time in Canada’s history in a bid to disperse the crowds that had been gathering peacefully.
The decision raised many eyebrows with legal experts arguing the situation at the time was peaceful and did not meet the threshold to invoke such powers that had never been seen before. At a press conference, lawyers from the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA) argued the government failed to meet the high legal threshold to invoke the action, and created special temporary powers in the process that breached fundamental rights.
In his testimony, Trudeau acknowledged that using such powers was a significant move but claimed that it led to the restoration of order.
But this was not a warzone! Canada resorted to its most powerful tool (which should have been used when the country is facing a national emergency) against peaceful gatherings.
That has raised many questions about Canada’s human rights record. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association warned that the move "threatens our democracy and our civil liberties".
The measure allowed the Canadian government to have far-reaching powers at its disposal. Among many punitive measures, it gave the government the ability to freeze the accounts of the protesters and revoke the insurance of truckers.
The government also enjoyed a wide array of powers including a ban on civilian protesters from traveling or using the military to evacuate protesters from certain areas. In essence, it granted the government of Trudeau almost carte blanche to respond to the protests.
Sure enough, Canadian banks began to freeze the bank accounts of people connected who police said had been involved in the protests. The police referred to Trudeau’s move, saying it gave officers sweeping new powers to go after the finances of the protesters.
Even when some of the freezes were lifted the organizers of the protests continued to face long-term consequences. One organizer, Tamara Lich, said she had been frozen out of all of her accounts and could come up with only 5,000 Canadian dollars for bail, which the court denied at the time.
A popular peaceful protest movement (no violence was ever used by the demonstrators) was crushed by the government's use of fear and scaremongering because of real concern from the government over how large the demonstrations would become.
These were protests that displayed the people's anger against the state but also displayed fear by the government over its image and popularity, with reports emerging Ottawa was even under pressure from Washinton to stop the increasingly popular protests from crossing the border.
Eva Chipiuk, one of the attorneys representing the protest organizers said this to the public hearing: "The government exceeded their jurisdiction, both constitutionally and legislatively… The Government of Canada chose the use of force—that is state violence—over peaceful negotiations and democratic engagement with the Canadian people. The sad irony is that the protest in Ottawa was fundamentally about government overreach… By invoking the Emergencies Act, the government stepped even further into its oppressive government, by quashing the most fundamental right that belongs to a Canadian democracy… This public inquiry is more than just looking into circumstances that led to the government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act. It is the beginning of a journey of rediscovering what it means to be Canadian… If there ever was a time for a prime minister to step down, now is that time,"
After the emergency declaration was issued, the police began turning over the names of organizers and people who participated in the rallies. This allowed the authorities to seize the assets of scores of individuals. The new powers allowed banks to freeze the personal accounts of anyone linked to the protests with no need for court orders.
“If you are involved in this protest, we will actively look to identify you and follow up with financial sanctions and criminal charges,” Reuters quoted Ottawa Interim Chief of police, Steve Bell, as saying. He added, “every single Canadian who supported truckers will be hunted down and ruined”.
James Bauder, the head of a group called Canada Unity, testified that he had hoped to persuade the governor-general, and the Senate, an appointed body, to remove Trudeau from office for “committing treason and crimes against humanity.”
Bauder, who now faces several criminal charges, repeatedly emphasized that none of the protest members ever called for violence, saying the demonstration was an act of “love and unity.”
Yet the Canadian Prime Minister has defended his action, claiming the local police were unable to end the protests and forced him to take action.
While Trudeau’s government has gone to the extent of imposing sanctions against countries such as Iran, where police officers have been murdered in cold blood for dealing with acts of riots, vandalism, murder, and terror; the Canadian PM claims he was forced to act over protests that were peaceful in nature with no violence ever used by the demonstrators.
Canada has a dark history of human rights abuses
While Canada likes to talk about human rights, its own human rights history is very disturbing.
Last year, the indigenous people of the land also known as First Nations began discovering the mass graves of children, whose families were native people of the land but were dragged away from their homes and taken to a school institutional system that has been described as “cultural assimilation”.
Around 150,000 indigenous children were forcibly taken away from their parents and taken to these institutional systems where they were subjected to torture, sexual abuse, and essentially death. Throughout most of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Canada sought to forcibly assimilate aboriginal youngsters by removing them from their homes and placing them in federally funded boarding schools that prohibited the expression of native traditions or languages.
Those who spoke their own native language were subject to torture, sexual abuse, and other graphic abuses.
The discovery of child mass graves in regions where the indigenous people lived was evidence of what the natives had been telling Canadian authorities for years. That tens of thousands of their children were forcibly removed from their families for decades and taken away to what some described as more like “concentration camps”. At just one so-called residential school more than 750 unmarked graves were discovered.
The reality here is that whilst the aboriginal leaders had been demanding the authorities to just listen to their stories, consecutive Canadian governments refused to do so.
It was only when the evidence began to slowly emerge that Canadian authorities began to acknowledge the grave human rights abuses because the evidence was too strong to run away from.
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