#breaking
1/15 #LONG 🧵
Frontier Centre for Public Policy, an award-winning western Canadian based public policy think tank released a rebuk to the #POEC report titled
"The Strange Conclusions of Justice Paul Rouleau"
#cdnpolitics
2/15 In the #POEC response Justice Rouleau states:
“concluded that the very high level threshold required for the invocation of the (Emergencies) Act was met.- I do not consider the factual basis for it to be overwhelming"
3/15 During the #POEC hearings, the RCMP, CSIS, OPP, and Ottawa Police Service testified that the protesters did not pose a threat to national security and that the Emergencies Act was not warranted
4/15 John Ossowski, the former president of the Canada Border Security Agency, also testified that all border points across Canada were at their lowest threat level on the morning of February 14, 2022.
5/15 Rouleau lamented that "lawful protest descended into lawlessness, culminating in a national emergency," but Judge Hugh McLean ruled that the protests in Ottawa were legal.
6/15 The police, RCMP, CSIS, and Attorney General David Lametti confirmed that none of the legal triggers were met to declare the protests an unlawful assembly.
7/15 Rouleau disagreed with Supt. Morris' intelligence assessment of the protests, which described the absence of credible threats and instances of serious violence, instead accepting the evidence from several witnesses that there was violence.
8/15 Rouleau's rejection of police testimony and his focus on "imagined" threats raise questions about the soundness of the intelligence gathering process.
9/15 Rouleau's report has been criticized for dismissing police testimony that there was no credible serious violence, and instead focusing on subjective assessments of "felt" violence by protesters.
10/15 The most serious charges of weapons possession in Coutts, Alberta, resulted in arrests by the RCMP using existing laws, rather than the Emergencies Act.
11/15 Rouleau justified the use of the Emergencies Act due to the government's failure to use existing laws to address the protests, which sets a low bar for declaring a state of emergency.
12/15 Rouleau's report has punctuated that Canada is drifting away from its democratic foundations and that government incompetence is now the threshold for suspending civil liberties.
13/15 The media's coverage of the protests highlights the potential for sensationalized reporting to fuel public panic and influence government responses to perceived threats.
14/15 The case also underscores the importance of transparency and accountability in government decision-making, particularly in times of crisis when the stakes are highest.
15/15 As Canadians reflect on the events of the past year, the need for strong democratic institutions and a commitment to upholding civil liberties has never been more clear.
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