Canadian Broadcasting Corporation has learned that Prime Minister Trudeau “will inform the provinces he will invoke the Emergencies Act to give the government extra powers to deal with the protests across the country. But in a meeting with the Liberal caucus, the PM said there were no plans to deploy the military.”
The move follows a meeting Sunday of the federal cabinet and its Incident Response Group (IRG).
Trudeau tweeted late Sunday that the IRG discussed “further actions the government can take to help end the blockades and occupations.”
Earlier that day, Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair told CBC’s Rosemary Barton Live that the federal government has discussed invoking special emergency powers to deal with ongoing protests in Ottawa.
Blair described the attitude around invoking the Emergencies Act as “appropriate caution” rather than “reticence.”
As CBC concludes, the law gives the federal government carte blanche to cope with a crisis, including the ability to enact emergency powers that allow it to prohibit travel within a specified area or remove personal property, while imposing fines or jail time on people contravening new orders.
This comes after reports on Sunday, Canadian officials cleared the roadway and arrested “Freedom Convoy” demonstrators who held the line and blocked the busiest U.S.-Canada border crossing for nearly a week. Canadian officials confirmed the bridge reopened earlier Monday morning as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is expected to invoke emergency powers to squash protesters around the country.
Traffic cameras on Ambassador Bridge, which connects Windsor and Canadian automotive plants with Detroit, show increased traffic flows around 0930 ET in both directions, into the US, and into Canada.
While the bridge’s reopening has been called a success by the government, demonstrators against medical tyranny disrupted hundreds of millions of trade between both countries. Bloomberg reports the price of the six-day shutdown cost a whopping $13.5 million an hour in traded goods and forced carmakers to shutter or limit production at plants in Ontario and Detroit.
About 500 miles northeast of Windsor, CBS News reports protesters in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, continue to “paralyze downtown.” The occupation of Ottawa has incited a movement across the country of freedom-loving people creating congestion across highways, metro areas, and border crossings — all because they’re fed up with Trudeau’s vaccine mandates and restrictions.
The government is struggling to quell the assembly of freedom-loving people from across the country as Trudeau’s government plays Whac-A-Mole” to squash protesters where every they show up.
