In its official report, the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC) has ruled that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act to quash Freedom Convoy protesters last year was justified.
According to Commissioner Paul Rouleau the federal government’s invocation “was appropriate” and in accordance with the requirements set out by the emergency legislation.
“I have concluded that Cabinet was reasonably concerned that the situation it was facing was worsening and at risk of becoming dangerous and unmanageable. There was credible and compelling evidence supporting both a subjective and objective reasonable belief in the existence of a public order emergency,” wrote Rouleau.
“The decision to invoke the Act was appropriate.”
Today the Public Order Emergency Commission concluded that the Trudeau government's invocation of the Emergencies Act was appropriate.
Rouleau also added that he arrived at the conclusion “with reluctance.”
“The state should generally be able to respond to circumstances of urgency without the use of emergency powers,” wrote Rouleau.
In his five-volume analysis, Rouleau stated that what originally began as a mass protest with legitimate concerns eventually became a national emergency.
“Lawful protest descended into lawlessness, culminating in a national emergency,” wrote Rouleau.
“In my view, there was credible and compelling information supporting a reasonable belief that the definition of a threat to the security of Canada was met.”
BREAKING: Public Order Emergency Commission finds the federal government's invocation of the Emergencies Act was appropriate. pic.twitter.com/CeeP3am3Tn
Rouleau’s report included several dozen recommendations including a review of the Emergencies Act to ensure “the threshold remains high, the invocation of the Act remains exceptional, and all appropriate safeguards are put in place to maintain Parliament’s ultimate and effective control over the steps taken by the Government in response to a public order emergency.”
Other recommendations include giving future commissions more power to force the government to disclose information. Additionally, Rouleau suggested prohibiting MPs from claiming “Parliamentary privilege to refuse to testify before a commission of inquiry into a public order emergency.”
Retail tipping options are starting to bother Canadians, according to a new survey.
Eight-in-ten respondents in a Thursday survey by Angus Reid said too many stores are requesting tips. At least 75% of every age or regional demographic agreed.
Roughly the same (78%) felt tipping is no longer about showing appreciation, and less (73%) said tipping was now just holding up the system where employers underpay their workers.
The majority (63%) say customers should not pay tips at coffee shops.
The survey was released on Thursday, and was conducted between January 31 and February 2nd.
What I shouldn't have to "afford" is subsidising a restaurant's payroll. Tipping should be an option for receiving excellent service, not manditory because someone served me
If there’s one thing most of us can agree on, it’s that this federal government has a major spending problem. And when the task of renewing a passport becomes an arduous endeavour that takes months and months to achieve, it begs the question: can we rely on this government to accomplish anything at all in a timely or cost-effective manner?
Here at Alberta Proud – the grassroots, all-things-Alberta machine that advocates for lower taxes, accountable politicians and our best-in-the-world energy – we are seeing everyday Albertans getting increasingly fed up with the disappointment being dished out by the federal government.
Whenever we bring up dialogue around “More Alberta, Less Ottawa,” it’s met with rally cries of support. As the feds continue to print money due to reckless government spending, as grocery prices hit double-digit increases in the last year, and more than 60 per cent of Canadians are struggling to put food on the table – can you really blame any reasonable person for not trusting the federal government anymore?
We are all impacted by it, from every item we purchase to every bill we pay, including our mortgages and rents.
Recently, some disturbing Statistics Canada numbers have indicated that only 40 per cent of Canadians trust the media and less than that trust Parliament. Just this week marked the ninth Liberal MP since 2015 to be found guilty of breaching government ethics. It’s a disappointingly high number that no doubt directly correlates to the tanking of trust in this Trudeau government and a rise in Canadians tuning in to alternative media.
Here in Alberta, we have been through a global crash in energy prices, all the while the federal government has had their hands out for equalization pay. Albertans feel a disconnect from Ottawa and are angered when Trudeau and his team make impactful decisions without proper consultation.
Premier Danielle Smith largely won a leadership race based on her promise to stand up for Alberta and stand up to Trudeau.
All Sovereignty Act semantics aside, the peanut gallery is pretty silent on challenging the concept of standing up to Ottawa’s overreach on such issues as firearms legislation, internet censorship, fertilizer restrictions that would decimate our farming industry, warning labels to put a bad rap on our best-in-the-world beef and the latest and greatest Just Transition plan – laying the federal framework to “transition” our energy workers away from our oilsands and toward “green energy jobs” aka unemployment.
While Premier Smith and the UCP have pushed back with a strong, and eminently true stance that the world needs more oil and gas jobs, and that we have everything right here to become a global supplier for our allies, Albertans are rightly concerned that the federal government could move ahead with this eco-radical agenda without considering the devastating impacts on not only our province, but the rest of the country and the world.
What’s even more alarming is that a tough provincial election is only months away and the Rachel Notley-led NDP have remained silent on standing up for our hardworking energy workers.
Oil prices are now soaring, global demand for our best-in-the-world energy is rising, Alberta has made record debt payments and our credit rating is rising. Our other industries are booming, including agriculture, aviation, financial services, petrochemicals, technology and innovation and tourism.
And we have to ask ourselves, would the NDP policy agenda keep that going, or would it disrupt it all in the name of an ideology?
Meanwhile, the UCP continues to forge ahead with concrete plans to reform our healthcare system, tackle both rural and inner city crime, as well as shout from the rooftops that Alberta is open for business and foster investment and job growth across the industry spectrum.
Will it be enough to restore general trust in the government for the voters? Time will tell, but it’s encouraging to see this government directly address some of the most important issues to Albertans.
A CEO of a top Canadian bank is warning that the Liberal government’s plan to raise immigration levels to 500,000 newcomers per year by 2025 could lead to an unprecedented social crisis.
According to Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (CIBC) CEO Victor Dodig, Canada will face disastrous consequences if the country is unable to build enough housing to accommodate the new immigrants.
“New Canadians want to establish a life here, they need a roof over their heads. We need to get that policy right and not wave the flag saying isn’t it great that everyone wants to come to Canada,” said Dodig on Feb. 14.
“The whole ecosystem has to work. If they can’t get a house, if they can’t get a doctor, if they are struggling to get a job, that’s not so good.”
Dodig cited healthcare woes, including an “unbelievable long line of people waiting for doctors, for procedures” in Canada.
He called on governments to address the issue by recognizing certifications and skills gained abroad.
“We should just advance those folks and not meet them in an Uber and say what do you do: I am a doctor from Iran and I can’t find a job here,” said Dodig.
“I think that still holds true for immigrants today. He was unskilled and for those that are coming with skills, many of the skills aren’t being recognized.”
Recent polls show that not all Canadians are on board with the federal government’s new immigration targets.
A Nov. 2022 Leger survey found that 49% of people polled thought the half-a-million annual immigration target was too high.
The federal government has also faced criticism from Quebec over its handling of the migrant crisis.
Recently, Ottawa has agreed to ship asylum seekers out of Quebec to Ontario and elsewhere as Quebec struggles to deal with the intake mainly coming from the controversial Roxham Road crossing point.
Earlier this week, Quebec Premier Francois Legault called on Trudeau to announce that Canada was full, referencing a past tweet by the prime minister which welcomed refugees to the country.
“It is time for Justin Trudeau to put out a new tweet to say not to come anymore, because we have exceeded our reception capacity,” said Legault.
“So, Trudeau has a responsibility in this, listen, we have problems with housing, capacity in schools, staff in hospitals, at some point, Trudeau has to send a new message.”
The Laurentian legacy media types are back to their old tricks.
After Pierre Poilievre held a rally in Windsor in front of another sell out crowd, left wing Twitter began doing what they did during the Freedom Convoy – minimizing the large group as just a gathering of angry white men. This tired attack at the opposition leader is just further proof that the left in Canada are afraid of Pierre Poilievre.
Tune in to the latest episode of Ratio’d with Harrison Faulkner!
Mature minors should have access to medical assistance in dying, according to a new report from Canada’s assisted-dying committee.
The news comes mere days after the federal Liberal government decided to pause their plans to expand access to assisted-dying to persons suffering from mental illness.
The Special Joint Committee recommended the Government of Canada give terminally-ill minors the authority to request euthanasia if the minor is believed to have sound judgment.
“The committee believes that eligibility for MAID [medical assistance in dying] should not be denied on the basis of age alone,” the report read. “For that reason, the committee recommends that the Government of Canada amend the eligibility criteria for MAID.”
The committee report said medical assistance in dying (MAID) would be limited to minors who have “requisite decision making capacity.”
Requisite decision-making capacity was not defined in the report, and is determined on a case-by-case basis between patients and MAID assessors, which are commonly doctors or nurses in Canada.
The report noted that rules surrounding assisted-death for minors should start strict, but may change.
“Most witnesses agreed that MAID should only be expanded to […] mature minors whose natural death is reasonably foreseeable, at least initially,” the report read.
Minors suffering from a terminal illness will benefit from control over the details of their death, the report argued, such as by being able to plan their death in a moment surrounded by family.
As the law stands today, though, parental guardianship would interfere with a child’s decision to medically end their life. As a result, the committee made a second recommendation to the Government of Canada.
The committee recommended that the Government involve parents in a MAID consultation, but ultimately suggested that the Government make a child’s decision final, and capable of overriding their parent’s guardianship.
The Western Canadian Wheat Growers put out a scathing statement on Wednesday accusing the federal government of ideological capture and failing to base their 30% fertilizer emissions reduction target on science.
In a press release, Wheat Growers president Gunter Jochum said Ottawa never took into consideration how the policy, first introduced in 2020, would impact farm yields.
“More and more government departments are failing to deliver on their mandates, and are being ideologically captured. We see this in Agriculture Canada, and now in the office of the Chief Science Advisor.
“At a time of food insecurity and skyrocketing consumer prices for basic food staples, to fail to consider the impact on the food supply of fertilizer reductions is frankly appalling.“
Jochum was responding to a Feb.2 testimony by the federal government’s Chief Science Advisor Dr. Mona Nemer who told Conservative MP Dan Mazier that she had not been consulted on whether the voluntary target for farmers would impact Canada’s food supply.
WATCH: Canada's Chief Science Advisor was NEVER ASKED to evaluate if the 30% fertilizer emission reduction target would harm food production.
If the Liberals aren't consulting their own scientists, who is coming up with these arbitrary climate targets?
“You have not personally seen any scientific reports or studies to suggest that the government’s 30% fertilizer emissions target can be met without decreasing food production. Is that correct?” asked Mazier.
“I have not,” replied Nemer.
“You have not seen any science on that?” said Mazier.
“Well, I haven’t seen any report on that,” said Nemer.
Nemer’s mandate includes providing “advice on issues related to science and government policies that support it. This includes advising on ways to ensure that scientific knowledge is considered in public policy decisions and that government science is fully available to the public.”
As exclusively revealed by True North in the Fertilizer Files, the federal government has floated the idea of forcing a fertilizer emission reduction onto farmers via a carbon tax-like “regulatory backstop.”
“A number of policy measures could be put forward for consideration beyond just a ‘voluntary agreement’,” wrote Agriculture Canada officials.
“A suite of policy approaches will be necessary, and consideration to be given to a regulatory backstop should voluntary approaches not be successful.”
For the first time in over a decade, the British Columbia legislature will sit a Conservative MLA.
On Thursday, Independent Nechako Lakes MLA John Rustad announced he was crossing the floor to the Conservative Party of British Columbia – almost six months after he was removed from the BC Liberal caucus by party leader Kevin Falcon before the party rebranded as BC United.
“As a British Columbian, I believe in what our province has to offer, but we are going to need to fight for it. I believe in a more self-sufficient BC, ripe with economic opportunity, compassion for those in need and a protection for our most personal freedoms. Only one party offers this vision – the Conservative Party of BC,” Rustad told True North.
BREAKING: John Rustad has announced that he has joined the Conservative Party of British Columbia and will sit as its MLA in the legislature.
We are excited to welcome John to our party alongside thousands of British Columbians. Next election, we will make history! #bcpolipic.twitter.com/QE5ZI72LWX
Rustad recently criticized the political scene in BC, saying there’s really not much diversity.
“I consider myself one of thousands of British Columbians who are fed up with the false choice between the BC NDP and the BC NDP-lite or so-called ‘BC United’,” he said.
Falcon removed Rustad from the Liberal caucus in August. He said Rustad’s pattern of dissident behaviour was not compatible with the party.
“While a diversity of perspectives are encouraged […] they cannot exist without that important foundation in place,” said Falcon.
Rustad had been criticizing aspects of the Liberal party’s stance on climate change. Liberal leader Falcon said that was at cross-purposes with the party.
Shortly before being ejected, Rustad shared a social media post which criticized the connection between CO2 emissions and climate change.
“I do not plan to stay silent on the many issues that are just wrong,” he later said. “I plan to be vocal about them.”
“It doesn’t serve the environment movement well, it doesn’t serve us as a province well.”
The last sitting Conservative MLA was John van Dongen who briefly represented the party in 2012.
The BC Conservative Party has undergone a rebranding and recently updated its platform. The party fielded candidates in recent provincial byelections, including in Falcon’s home riding, as well as in Surrey South where candidate Harman Bhangu received 12.7% of the vote.
Rustad endorsed Bhangu’s candidacy only a week after he had been removed from the BC Liberals.
When asked what his priorities will be moving forward, Rustad told True North that healthcare reform and reinstating unvaccinated workers will be at the top of the list.
“In my first few days, I intend to continue to advocate for healthcare reform including offering employment to the roughly 7000 healthcare workers who were fired or quit due to government mandates and disrespect,” said Rustad.
