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Inquiry Releases Report On Public Emergency Order

By Staff Feb 17, 2023 | 5:33 PM

The inquiry looking in the use of the Public Emergency Order by the federal government last February finds it was necessary.

Commissioner Paul Rouleau says the government did meet the very high standard needed to implement it to deal with the Freedom Convoy.

“Cabinet had reasonable grounds to believe that there existed a national emergency arising from threats to the security of Canada that necessitated the taking of special temporary measures,” Rouleau said in a news conference on Friday.

Rouleau says the use of the Emergency Order was necessitated by a series of policing failures.

“Some of the missteps may have been small, but others were significant.  Taken together they contributed to a situation that spun out of control.”

Rouleau says the failure wasn’t just in policing, but all levels of government, which didn’t collaborate or rise above politics to respond to the threat.

A total of 56 recommendations have made for policing, federal intelligence collection and reforms to the Emergencies Act.