OTTAWA: Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will inform provincial premiers of his intention to invoke special measures to give the federal government extraordinary powers to deal with protests that have shut some border crossings with the United States and paralysed parts of Canada’s capital, CBC News said on Monday.
Citing unnamed sources, CBC said Trudeau planned to invoke the Emergencies Act, a rarely used provision that allows the federal government to override the provinces and authorise special temporary measures to ensure security during national emergencies anywhere in the country.
It has only been used once in peacetime — by Trudeau’s father, former prime minister Pierre Trudeau — during the so-called “October Crisis” in 1970. It was invoked twice during the two world wars, when it was known as the War Measures Act.
The CBC said Ottawa had no plans to send in the military. A six-day blockade of North America’s busiest trade corridor in Windsor, Ontario, ended on Sunday while protests in Ottawa entered a third week.
The “Freedom Convoy” protests, started by Canadian truckers opposing a vaccinate-or-quarantine mandate for cross-border drivers, have turned into a rallying point for people opposing the policies of Trudeau’s government, covering everything from pandemic restrictions to a carbon tax.
The premier of Ontario announced on Monday that he will lift vaccine passport requirements in the Canadian province, the epicentre of protests against Covid-19 health measures for more than two weeks now.
“We’re going to get rid of the passports’’, said Premier Doug Ford at a press conference, explaining that the vast majority of people were vaccinated and that the peak of cases sparked by the Omicron variant had passed.
— AFP
