Was the Emergencies Act really about the economy?

David Moscrop is a writer and political commentator. He is the author of Too Dumb for Democracy and a new Substack newsletter.

As the Public Order Emergency Commission moves on to its next phase – expert roundtable discussions ahead of tabling its findings in the House of Commons in February – observers are still working to make sense of the endless angles of the thing. But one has come into sharp relief during the hours of testimony before commissioner Paul Rouleau: It was at least partly about the economy. Of course it was.

We can debate what “partly” means. But the answer will depend on whose perspective you’re interrogating. During his testimony on the last day of the commission, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said economic concerns contributed to the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, but they were secondary to public-safety concerns.

“My motivation was entirely about ensuring the safety of Canadians,” he said. “My secondary motivation was making sure Canadians continue to have confidence in their institutions and society’s ability to function and enforce the rule of law when it’s not being respected,” he added. That leaves the economy third.

Meanwhile, back at the Department of Finance, Deputy Prime Minister and Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland seemed far more motivated by the economic impact of the occupation and blockades. That checks out. That’s her bailiwick. During her appearance before the commission, Ms. Freeland testified to her concern that the occupation and blockades were bad for the economy – indeed, they were “profoundly jeopardizing it,” as she put it.

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One may not be surprised to learn that what helped crystallize her understanding of the matter were calls with the chief executive officers of Canada’s major banks. The commission reveals the influence of the CEOs, who were concerned Canada was becoming a “joke.” Investors were nervous and there was growing concern the country might suffer long-term economic damage as confidence in the security and reliability of international trade and supply chains waned. So, their concern became the Finance Minister’s.

Ms. Freeland was careful to position the economic threats – such as the trade-disrupting blockade of the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor, Ont., and Detroit – as threats to national security as well.

Is that true? It depends on what you mean. Ms. Freeland’s framing may be persuasive, but the economic threats were political and immaterial in regards to the Emergencies Act. Skittish bankers do not constitute a national security threat. Nonetheless, she has a point.

That point ought to make observers a bit uncomfortable. By Feb. 14, when the act was invoked, the occupiers and blockaders had been ensconced for some time. The Ambassador Bridge was shut down from Feb. 7 to 13. The Coutts, Alta., border blockade began on Jan. 29; the Ottawa occupation started the same day. One would hope it wasn’t the worries of a handful of oligopolist bankers that finally secured the concern of Ms. Freeland that some extraordinary measure was required to dismantle the network of occupiers who had taken the country hostage in the capital and along two border crossings.

Of course, the bankers were important elements of the plan given that the Emergencies Act was used, in part, to freeze accounts and funds by way of the banks – a process that takes time and a court order under normal circumstances. Roughly $8-million was frozen across more than 200 accounts under the authority of the act. The government needed the banks to strangle the economic resources used by or available to the blockaders and occupiers to help send them packing.

The whole affair leaves those who are critical of both bank power and the occupiers and blockaders in an awkward but not irreconcilable position. The primary motivation for ending the sieges ought to have been that Canada must not tolerate sustained illegal and dangerous action by purveyors of reactionary white grievance politics. Whether they pose an economic threat should be a secondary concern.

The blockades and occupation were indeed a threat. And the people harmed the most by that activity were the working-class people who, ostensibly, the convoy participants and their boosters were pretending to stand up for. Jamming up trade routes that workers rely on, keeping people from going to their jobs, and indeed risking the very existence of those jobs is not worker-friendly action. More to the point, the blockades and occupation weren’t about the interests of workers. They were a reactionary tantrum. Accordingly, as sometimes happens, the interests of the banks, the government and workers aligned.

That was then. Now we ought to maintain a critical eye on the oversized and growing power of oligopoly in Canada and ensure that should something like the convoy happen again, we are not left relying on a temporary alignment of interests and the panicky persuasion of the country’s big banks.

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