Don Martin: An emergency about nothing as tow trucks become the excuse to act

Pressed hard for an Emergencies Act justification with the protests gone, border blockades down and convoy leaders in custody, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau reached deep into his leadership vacuum for rationalizations.

The emergency demanding the unprecedented use of the Act was . . . hesitant tow truck drivers, the prime minister declared.

Without a broad range of new federal powers, he argued in defending this mostly obsolete crisis intervention, truckers would not be towed without the Act and thus the occupation would still fill the streets around Parliament Hill.

There are other measures in the Act that helped, he noted, including financial monitoring to make crowdfunding of illegal activities more difficult. Two thumbs up to that, although provincial powers might’ve sufficed.

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Only in Canada could this most-powerful of Acts be aimed at forcing reluctant tow truck drivers, who usually hover like price-gouging vultures over high-accident locations and snow-clearing routes, to drop the hook for a big-ticket rig removal.

This is clearly an Emergencies Act in search of an emergency after being introduced two weeks too late and approved on Monday night by a vote of 185 to 151, two days after the inspiration for the Act had left the city.

Of course, there are no winners in this stew of parliamentary toxicity, flailing leadership, police hesitancy, city council division and insurrection insanity.

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh, who sided with the government to approve the Act, has decided the nuclear option is needed for a protest which, while nasty, noisy and unsettling, was far from violent.

I’m not sure how Singh will be able to oppose using the Emergencies Act to fight violent attacks on gas pipelines or to counter any future armed confrontations with First Nations.

The Conservatives, too many of whom have canoodled with the convoy, will have to accept a harsh judgment from middle-spectrum Canadians as they look for a new leader.

They failed to read a national room going very negative against these protests and, as a result, they’ve gone from legitimate government-in-waiting to fighting against People’s Party Leader Maxime Bernier at the bottom of the nut barrel.

And, of course, there’s Trudeau, the convoy instigator who washed his hands of all responsibility for a problem he created that no longer exists but needs a law-enforcement sledgehammer now that the clean-up crews have arrived.

There are many reasons why Trudeau should be worried about having his severely polarized reputation wrapped in tar and feathers.

He imposed a vaccine restriction on truckers without a medical reason to justify it. He dismissed the many who are fed up with restrictions and vaccine mandates as a “fringe.” He acted to clear a key border crossing only when scolded by the U.S. president. He went invisible and silent as the protests escalated and he failed to cajole premiers into a coherent unified Canada-wide response.

For all these flaws and faults framed by his moistly delivered repetitive geyser of rhetorical babble, his reputation has taken a hard hit.

In the end, somehow, police will emerge as the best among the losers, finally doing their jobs without inciting widely predicted violence.

After missing the rig-rolling-in threat and engaging in painfully slow and too-friendly enforcement, they got the cop numbers they needed and steadily pushed back.

While I’ll bow to the view of police chiefs who say the Emergencies Act was at play during the breakups, it sure looked like basic police on parade using their everyday powers to corral and disperse a mostly-peaceful crowd.

So now what? Well, with vaccine mandates and restrictions easing, it would be the right time for reconciliation to begin with all sides pledging to bridge the divide on pandemic restrictions.

But, even as he was calling for national healing to begin, the prime minister, who last week blasted a Jewish MP for standing with swastika wavers, was setting a trap for the Conservatives.

By taking this unnecessary Emergencies Act to a vote of confidence, Trudeau is setting up the Official Opposition to look like the parliamentary weaklings against an insurrection-driven occupancies and business blockades.

While true to an extent, it’s doubtful Trudeau will be around to use it against whomever leads the Conservatives into the next election.

As the convoys retreated, they left behind smouldering wrecks in Canada’s political leadership. Removing them may be the most legitimate emergency use of tow trucks.

That’s the bottom line.