The end of the beginning

POEC public hearings are finished, what next?

The public hearings phase of the work of the Public Order Emergency Commission concluded on Friday, November 25, with the Prime Minister’s testimony. Media accounts I have seen gave it a strong performance grade, which accords with my sense from the hearing room, and what I wrote in my own column posted yesterday (“The Prime Minister in the Fog”). A former chief of staff to a PM (from across the Parliamentary aisle) called it a “good day for the Prime Minister.” Nor was it attended by any of the trappings of a political show. The Prime Minister was deliberate in his answers, took his time for thought (probably not usually allowed in the House of Commons) and showed a remarkable grasp of the details of what must have been a tsunami of information and decision-making.

There was even a shout-out as the Prime Minister left the stand in the afternoon from a couple of members of the audience—”thank you Justin.” I couldn't quite figure out whether this was in earnest or meant in sarcasm. All I can say is that the shout-out came from the side of the room that wasn’t dominated by the Freedom Convoy crowd (somehow the room divided that way, curiously it was the Freedom Convoy group on the right side; others on the left. Make of that what you will).

I didn't spot many people in the hearing room public audience (maybe 100 in total) that I knew. Justin Ling was there, author of a must-read substack newsletter, “Bug Eyed and Shameless,”

and Michael Kempa, a criminologist from the University of Ottawa whose commentary on the Freedom Convoy I have always found astute. Speaking of astute commentary, see his latest piece in the National Post summing up the arguments made about the legal thresholds in the Emergencies Act.

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/how-trudeau-barely-made-his-emergencies-act-case

I did spend some time outside the Library and Archives Canada building where the hearings were held, waiting to be admitted. Media colleagues had suggested I come an hour early. I expected a large crowd and hoped I would get a seat. But there was only a small initial gathering, huddled under the eaves of the building doorway (there was a cold drizzle to accompany the fog), which rendered useless the cattle pen maze that security has constructed in anticipation.

I donned my amateur journalist hat and asked a few of these people why they were there. There was a family group from northern Ontario who had driven six hours to Ottawa the previous day. There was a pastor from the “Biker Church” in Vanier, who told me about the travails of the community she serves. There was a young man with a yellow notebook in his back pocket who seemed to be semi-official but wasn't and couldn't tell me why he was there. There was an autodidact, nice but with all the usual traits. There was a woman who was professional researcher and often spent time in the archives upstarts, but who had come because she knew it was a historic day. There was a first year University student from Carleton (god, they get younger every day) who told me that his professor had encouraged the class to attend. Good for her and for him. He was the youngest member of the hearing room audience by far, other than a few very young kids who had tagged along with mothers.

And then there was a stern-faced man who told me he had been at the protests, serving on the front-lines as a “peacemaker.” He said he had been clubbed by a rifle butt from a tactical police officer (we are now familiar with the acronym POE, ”Public Order Unit”). Later he shouted out about vaccines killing people. There was an individual with a whole series of hand-made placards who was asked to remove them from the immediate vicinity of the entrance way. And at street level a Freedom Convoy supporter, waving a large Canada flag. This elicited occasional honking from passing pick-up trucks as they booted their way down Wellington Street (at least as far as you can, because the Parliamentary precinct is now permanently blocked—thank you Freedom Convoy). It was all pretty tame. Peaceable, law-abiding, Canadian.

So what next for the Commission? The Commission has another week of public events ahead, this time involving policy roundtables on selected themes. Michael Kempa described the crowd of experts (some 50 in number) who will join the Commission for the discussions as the “tall foreheads.” Or maybe he meant coneheads? In any case I will be one of them, and I also hope to write about some of the highlights from the round tables which will be open to the public and live-streamed.

You can find the current list of roundtables and participants here:

https://publicorderemergencycommission.ca/files/documents/2022-10-25-Round-Table-Topics-and-Participants.pdf

There are nine roundtables in total. Only one deals centrally with national security issues (on Wednesday, November 30). The national security roundtable consists of two former senior national security officials, Dick Fadden and Ward Elcock; two legal academics, Leah West and Kent Roach; and myself. It should be interesting, not least because I am sure we will disagree. (What good would be a group of experts that agreed on something?) All the other roundtables have, to some degree, a national security and intelligence component.

Hard to know what to expect of these discussions, but I will try to keep readers posted.

And then? At some point the Commission will receive formal written submissions from all the parties with standing, highlighting their points of view. I assume these will be posted to the Commission website.

The finale will come quickly. Commissioner Rouleau must submit his final report to the Governor in Council (e.g. the Prime Minister and Cabinet), on February 6, 2023. It will then be tabled to Parliament on February 20 and made public. It would be the understatement of the year to say this is a tight timetable.

The media spotlight will move on to other stories in the meantime, but the Commission’s final report will be much anticipated. Not because the Commission will find that the government was out of bounds on the law when it invoked the Emergencies Act—I think that very unlikely. Instead, the report is bound to be full of criticism of the handling of the Freedom Convoy protests by various levels of government and their agencies. This is what Commission counsel referred to as its “challenge function.” It will have some interesting recommendations to make, I am sure, about reshaping the law in future, so that Canada is better able to meet 21st century national security challenges, and not have to get creative with 20th century legislation.