FINA Committee Report

NDP Supplementary Report

New Democrats agree with the substance of the committee report and its recommendations. The committee’s recommendations provide important feedback to the government on its implementation of financial measures under the authority of the Emergencies Act (EA). New Democrats hope that circumstances will never warrant the invocation of this act ever again, but in the event such measures are required in the future, these recommendations show how the government can exercise those powers with even more regard for due process and the rights and freedoms of Canadians.

The Finance Committee did important work in following up on the use of financial measures under the EA. Parliamentary oversight rightly has a central place in the EA. Canadians should expect no less. A strong commitment to delivering this oversight and accountability was a cornerstone of New Democrats’ support for invoking the act.

While New Democrats believe that invoking the EA was necessary in the circumstances to clear the occupations and blockades, we believe that those circumstances could have been avoided. The sequence of events that ultimately required the invocation of the act are riddled with failures of leadership by all levels of government, as well as failures in policing across multiple jurisdictions.

Together these failures allowed the national capital and various border crossing to be occupied for up to 18 days prior to the invocation of the act. During that time Ottawa residents were consistently harassed in their homes, places of work and in public spaces, police discovered weapon caches at border protests and there were serious allegations of conspiracy to commit murder, among other things.

While municipal and provincial governments had declared their own states of emergency, these were demonstrably ineffective at ending the occupation and restoring order. We know that extraordinary measures were required to diffuse a volatile and dangerous situation. Why and how officials let it get to that point is a question we look to the Special Joint on the Declaration of Emergency and Justice Rouleau’s inquiry to answer.

The scope of the Finance Committee’s study was properly more narrow than that. The testimony shows that the measures were proportionate, targeted and time-limited. Officials appear to have used the financial powers authorized under the act for the sole purpose of incenting protesters to leave the occupation sites. As the committee’s recommendations highlight, there are ways that the federal government can and should have been more clear with Canadians and their financial institutions with respect to how financial powers under the act would be exercised both within and beyond the formal period of emergencies measures.

The committee’s investigation did touch on larger issues of international financing of political activity in Canada, money laundering and foreign interference in our democratic affairs, but the financial powers granted under the act do not appear to have been used as part of a strategy to tackle these larger issues. Once again we look to the Special Joint on the Declaration of Emergency and Justice Rouleau’s inquiry to provide insight into these larger issues and proffer any recommendations in these regards that they deem appropriate.