Democracy in Name Only

Prior to declaring the trucker protest a national emergency, the government sidelined its own security experts.

A document submitted to the Emergencies Act inquiry by the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) describes a highly improper series of events involving the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS).

That entity is tasked with monitoring and investigating threats to Canada’s national security. CSIS does this for a living - all day, every day. It’s personnel are trained. They’re experienced. This is their area of expertise.

That doesn’t mean they never make mistakes. But Canadian taxpayers fund an entire CSIS infrastructure and have a right to expect this entity will be center stage prior to the government declaring a national emergency.

But as the CCF explains, that’s not what happened in February 2022. In writing, David Vigneault, the head of CSIS, advised the government that neither the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa, nor the protests in various other places across the country, posed any threat to national security. This was the expert opinion of Canada’s national security experts.

But this assessment - which should have been the most influential piece of evidence under consideration - wasn’t even seen by all Cabinet ministers before they made their historic decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.

Those people didn’t have a debate about the CSIS conclusion. They didn’t collectively decide it was contradicted by compelling evidence from another source. They simply didn’t address it. Justin Trudeau chose to behave as though the CSIS opinion didn’t exist. And the rest of the people at the table - Cabinet ministers entrusted with running this country - let him get away with it.

The CCF explains in paragraph 39, on page 12:

It was the Prime Minister’s ultimate responsibility to ensure that the Cabinet was provided with the CSIS Threat Assessment, to place it on the agenda, and to ask Director Vigneault to address it…that was never done…the Cabinet was not presented with one of the most relevant inputs for its decision.

Here’s another quote, from paragraph 41:

CSIS is an expert, non-partisan security intelligence agency with a statutory mandate to assess threats to national security. If Cabinet chose to disagree with the CSIS assessment, it had to provide evidence and reasons…

Today, nearly a year later, the position of the Canadian government still amounts to ‘Trust us. We’re the good guys.’

This is sobering stuff. You can pay for all the security expertise in the world, but it’s all pointless if you choose to ignore that expertise.

You can have a Cabinet of elected officials, but if those officials don’t actually perform their duties - if they remain silent while the Prime Minister indulges his totalitarian instincts - you’ve got democracy in name only.