Ford urges Trudeau to make ‘targeted’ use of Emergencies Act to clear protesters

Concerns arise over invoking of Emergencies Act Noa Mendelsohn Avive from the Civil Liberties Assoc. speaks on how there's no precedent for the Emergencies Act to have been invoked.

Premier Doug Ford urged the federal government to take an “extremely targeted” approach to the newly invoked Emergencies Act and extinguish the ongoing occupation of the nation’s capital in the next few days.

“I made it clear to the prime minister that any special powers need to be extremely targeted, only used for as long as necessary to resolve the situation and not one minute longer,” Ford said while making an announcement in Hamilton on Tuesday.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made Canadian history on Monday when he enacted emergency powers and granted the federal government a wide range of sweeping new measures that will be leveraged to push protesters out of Ottawa and border blockades.

The prime minister’s announcement follows Ford’s provincial declaration of a state of emergency on Friday, also in an effort to put an end to the “siege” in Ottawa and the barricade at Windsor’s border, which has since reopened.

“Cleaning up the situation needs to be our top priority. Right now, our police forces have every single tool they could possibly need to manage the situation, and I have confidence that they'll do that,” Ford said.

The premier said he hopes the police will “get these people moving on” in the next few days or ideally, sooner.

“They are hurting more people than the pandemic could ever hurt,” Ford said.