Shallow, Self-Serving Sanctimony

Civil servant who pushed the Emergencies Act relied on her own 'totality' assessment rather than the letter of the law.

Part 1: Objective Ottawa Insiders?
Part 2: Canada's Activist Civil Service
Part 3: Going Nuclear on the Truckers
Part 4: The Many Meanings of Violence
Part 5: Shallow, Self-Serving Sanctimony

Screen capture from the hearing video. From left to right, lawyer Sujit Choudhry, Clerk of the Privy Council Office Janice Charette, Deputy Clerk Nathalie Drouin.

Testifying under oath at an Emergencies Act hearing Janice Charette, Canada’s top civil servant, repeatedly told us she chose to ignore the plain meaning of that Act. Never mind the rules. Her personal frustration, her view that protests had gone on long enough and were happening in too many parts of the country, her concern that police resources were stretched, her fear that violence might erupt - that’s what carried the day.

This wasn’t about the protesters, but the inability of the ruling class to cope with widespread public dissent. A government that adamantly refused to admit the protesters might have a point pressed the big red Emergency button rather than sit down and talk to them.

Doggedly, repeatedly, Ms. Charette insisted the carefully crafted wording of the Emergencies Act isn’t sacrosanct. She used her own definitions, you see. Of what serious violence means. Of what a national emergency looks like. She tells us she made her historic decision based on the totality of what was going on.

On page 146 of the official transcript, she talks about February 13th, the Sunday of the third weekend of the Ottawa protest:

There - make no mistake, there were people who were there for a lawful protest, but at that point, the totality of the situation in Ottawa was an illegal protest, an illegal blockade. [bold here and elsewhere added by me]

Does she explain? Provide hard evidence? Make a coherent, compelling argument? I’m afraid not. She simply declares this to be fact and moves on. But that’s not good enough. A protest does not become illegal with the wave of a bureaucrat’s hand.

The Emergencies Act is meant to be a last resort. Existing laws and mechanisms must be insufficient. On page 156, Ms. Charette says Cabinet ministers were advised, prior to making one of the most important decisions of their career, that the police had not exhausted all the tools available to them. But, she says,

the question was whether or not [those tools] were going to be adequate to be able to deal with the totality of the situation.

On page 191, when talking about the memo in which she urged the Prime Minister to go nuclear on the truckers, she admits it may have been possible to respond to different protests in different parts of the country with existing police powers,

But if you look at the totality of it all, that's what lies behind this advice.

On page 193, she talks about “the totality of the evidence.”

On page 204, she talks about “the totality of the situation facing us.”

On page 231, she says:

The decision was that the Prime Minister would convene a [virtual] meeting with [provincial & territorial leaders] to…consider any other measures necessary to deal with the totality of the situation facing the country.

On pages 268-270, she’s grilled by a civil liberties lawyer about the fact that, a day prior to the Emergencies Act being invoked, police had finalized a plan they believed would have dispersed the Ottawa protesters.

But, but, responds Ms. Charette, “there were bylaws that were not being fully enforced…We saw protesters filling [Jerry] cans with water as opposed to gas. So there was a lot going on.” Police were doing their best, she adds, but had an “extraordinarily difficult situation to deal with, the occupation in Ottawa.” In other words, she’d already made her decision and wasn’t about to be dissuaded:

there was no single plan at any single site that would have necessarily changed my advice to the Prime Minister about the totality of the circumstances which led to the invocation of the Emergencies Act.

For good measure, here she is again, nine pages later:

I would say that the total picture, in terms of what was happening in Ottawa, including…the fact law enforcement resources were extraordinarily taxed…was a sign of the magnitude of the threat…

Which threat, exactly? Bouncy castles? Hot tubs? Dance parties?

There’s no way around this. Our government relied on the flimsiest analysis imaginable. Hand wringing. Hand waving. A full nine months later, the bureaucrat responsible can point to no good reason for invoking the Emergencies Act. No new evidence. No startling revelations.

There’s nothing here beyond shallow, circular, self-serving sanctimony.