Challenge in Canada: Justin Trudeau announces the use of the law on emergency measures

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, February 11, 2022. REUTERS - PATRICK DOYLE

Text by: RFI Follow

3 mins

The Canadian Prime Minister announced on Monday, February 14, the use of the Emergency Measures Act to end the “ 

” blockades of anti-sanitary measures protesters that have been underway in the country for more than two weeks.

Advertising

Read more

This is only the second time this provision has been activated in peacetime.

“

 ,” said the Canadian Prime Minister, adding that the army would not be deployed and that the new measures would be "

".

The Canadian protest movement that began in late January started with truckers protesting against the obligation to be vaccinated to cross the border between Canada and the United States.

But the demands have extended to a refusal of all health measures and, for many demonstrators, to a rejection of the government of Justin Trudeau.

"Few Limits"

The Emergencies Act can be invoked “ 

emergency  ” and gives the federal government more power to end it by allowing it to authorize “ 

”.

Several provincial premiers expressed their opposition to the implementation of this provision, which corresponds to a national state of emergency, before Justin Trudeau spoke.

In 1970, the government of Pierre Elliott Trudeau, father of the current Prime Minister, invoked it for the first time to send the army to Quebec and take a series of emergency measures, after the kidnapping by the Front liberation of Quebec by a British commercial attaché, James Richard Cross, and a Quebec minister, Pierre Laporte.

Mr. Cross had been released after negotiations, but the Minister had been found dead in the trunk of a car.

“

, ”explained Geneviève Tellier, professor of political studies at the University of Ottawa, quoted by Agence France-Presse.

"

Keep up the pressure

"

On Monday, Canadian police seized weapons and ammunition and arrested eleven people on the Coutts border blockade in Alberta (west), a crossing point with the United States that has been paralyzed for a week.

Authorities recovered thirteen long guns, handguns, several sets of body armor, and a large amount of ammunition.

The police had managed Sunday evening, after seven days of blockage, to

, which connects Windsor in Ontario to the American city of Detroit in Michigan.

The paralysis of this major border axis had prompted Washington, worried about the economic consequences, to intervene with Justin Trudeau.

The Prime Minister of Ontario, the most populous Canadian province in which the cities of Ottawa and Windsor are located, announced Monday morning the upcoming lifting of almost all health measures, including the vaccine passport.

But

, opponents of health measures still occupied downtown streets.

Some 400 trucks are installed supported by a well-established organization: tents to warm up, campfires, food stands.

Since the establishment of the state of emergency on Friday, they risk receiving a fine of up to 100,000 Canadian dollars (69,500 euros) or even a year in prison.

Emulators

This unprecedented Canadian mobilization continued Monday to be emulated elsewhere in the world.

After similar protests in Australia and New Zealand, thousands of cars and trucks in Israel drove into Jerusalem from several cities across the country.

In Europe, after converging on Paris on Saturday, part of the convoys of opponents of health restrictions, known as “freedom”, arrived in Brussels, where the demonstration was banned.

The Belgian authorities blocked about thirty vehicles which were about to go to Brussels.

(

AFP)

Newsletter

Receive all the international news directly in your mailbox

I subscribe

Follow all the international news by downloading the RFI application

google-play-badge_EN

• Canada

• Justin Trudeau