Roundup: Emergency orders lifted before the Senate votes were cast

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By late afternoon, yesterday, prime minister Justin Trudeau ended the emergency orders, at a time when the Senate had not yet voted to confirm them. This, of course, led to numerous cries from opponents that they had helped to end it (declaring victory for pushing on an open door), and accusations that Trudeau knew he would lose the Senate vote so pulled the plug beforehand. And then there were the questions about what changed between Monday and yesterday that made it okay to lift the restrictions, of which the official line is “advice from law enforcement,” but one also suspects was that they might have felt it inappropriate to lift it before it had even been brought to a vote, but conversely didn’t want to keep the orders for too much longer after that. I’m not sure. Suffice to say, it’s over, and all of the cries of “tyranny!” and “Trudeau is doing this to increase his own power!” seem pretty stupid right about now.

Speaking of the Senate, they were progressing through a second full day of speeches with no end—or vote—in sight, when the order was lifted and they simply adjourned debate. This is something of an indictment on how the Senate handled this matter in terms of their schedule. They should have recalled the Chamber as soon as the Act was invoked and the emergency orders declared, so that they could receive them on the same day as the House of Commons and debate them concurrently, as it’s not a piece of legislation that has to pass one Chamber before the other, but they didn’t, and their planned Friday recall was cancelled by the police action, further delaying the debate. And then some of the same problems that the House of Commons saw presented themselves in the Senate as well—that absolutely everyone wanted to have their own speech on the record, no matter that having something new to say diminished with each passing speech, but this is what the “new” Senate is becoming—a debating society rather than a deliberative legislative body. And while sure, there were some good speeches, there were also some doozies that repeated the same falsehoods and info ops that the occupation organizers were counting on, so well done everyone.

Meanwhile, Matt Gurney calls for more information as to what constituted the continued use of powers in advance of their being lifted. Andrew Coyne puts the nine days of the emergency orders into perspective versus how it has been portrayed by bad faith actors across social media and certain political parties.

Good reads:

  • Putin has declared a “special military operation” in Ukraine, and it looks like an attack is underway. Justin Trudeau is vowing more severe measures against Russia.
  • Pablo Rodriguez is pitching the proposed bill to make web giants pay for news as a way of saving legacy media and combatting fake news. (Yeah, I have my doubts).
  • The government is promising another $140 million to retain the temporary staff at Veterans Affairs hired to help clear their disability claims backlog.
  • The US Trade Representative is unhappy with Canada’s plans for a digital services tax (which would only be implemented if the OECD global minimum tax fails).
  • Chrystia Freeland has a one-on-one with the Globe and Mail, and there are a few interesting tidbits in there.
  • There was a fire in Liberal MP Peter Fonseca’s constituency office, which police believe was targeted.
  • Jason Kenney is planning on carrying on with his legal challenge of the invocation of the Emergencies Act (because he needs to keep deflecting attention).
  • Two conservative critics emailed their colleagues to tell them not to invent any more “Briane” figures without substantial proof to back up their claims.
  • Philippe Lagassé has some thoughts about the Parliamentary Review Committee outlined in the Emergencies Act, and no, it cannot be NSICOP so stop asking.
  • Althia Raj sees big holes in election financing laws, particularly around crypto, given how it became prominent as part of the foreign funding part of the occupation.
  • Andrew Coyne worries that reality is being undermined by the rise in disinformation that a credulous segment of the population is too eager to believe.

Odds and ends:

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Emergency orders lifted before the Senate votes were cast”

  2. Someone please inform the Liberals that saving legacy media does not necessarily mean combatting fake news. Why no crackdown on how deleterious Postmedia, an American-owned and GOP-affiliated propaganda outfit, has been to the Canadian psyche and the body politic? It’s just the dead tree version of Rebel and Post Millennial. Coyne may be correct that there has been an unmooring of reality and a rise in disinformation but the Internet isn’t solely to blame for that. He should look at his own colleagues in the so-called legacy media for their role in this parallel plague, and for that matter, Rodriguez should look at them too.

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