Good Saturday morning readers. Here we are, the day after yesterday’s Shitshow from Ottawa. As is usual for the Shitshow PM Turvert, he had two corruption pots boiling over on the same end of news cycle Friday. He had the release of his faux POEC report and he had the release of the CSIS report on selection interference in Canada’s last federal selection. One cancelled out the other.
Today I want to present an excellent analysis of Rouleau’s deeply flawed POEC report that I found on MSM but which appeared in this mornings National Post. It’s by lawyer Andrew Wudrick. Reading it brought down my blood pressure by a few notches. First I want to post the links to my two previous posts chock-a-block full of links that I’ve posted over the last few days. Then I will give my conclusions at the end of Wudrick’s op-ed:
Aaron Wudrick: The Emergencies Act threshold is now incompetence, apparently
Opinion by Special to National Post
“If you were looking for some weekend reading, Justice Paul Rouleau has you covered. Friday’s release of the Public Order Emergency Commission’s voluminous 2,092 page final report, authored by Rouleau, is nothing if not thorough. It incorporates everything from an analysis of the history of the early 2022 convoy and border blockades, media coverage, police operational decisions and government action, capped off with analysis, findings and recommendations.
Supporters of the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act will be greatly cheered by the central conclusion arrived at by Rouleau that the government’s invocation of the act was appropriate, and no doubt this will be the primary talking point advanced by the government’s communications machine in the coming weeks. The debate is over; vindication is ours.
For a government with a lot of fires to put out, you can’t really blame them. But scratch the surface of the report, and the caveats start to become apparent. In considering the measures used under the act, Rouleau acknowledges that the commission “does not have the legal authority to render a formal judgment on the ‘lawfulness’ of the measures” — which are the proper purview of a court. Accordingly, his choice of the preferred standard of “appropriateness” is a more “open-textured standard that permits me to assess the measures holistically” and he does not “intend or consider my findings on this topic to be in any sense binding on the courts.”
To be fair to Rouleau, he knew he was caught between a rock and a hard place: fail to make a finding and be accused of ducking; or make a finding and get pilloried for stepping outside his mandate. In the end, he decided to split the difference. While finding that the government met the high threshold required, he noted he did not “come to this conclusion easily” and did “not consider the factual basis to be overwhelming” while allowing that “there is significant strength to the arguments against reaching it.”
This sort of hedging will be unsatisfying to people on both sides of the debate. On a matter of such importance, and having recognized that the issue remains before the Federal Court, one would think that the appropriate course of action would be to either state one’s position with a high degree of confidence or withhold taking one altogether.
Much of Rouleau’s rationale rests upon the well-established criminal law “reasonable belief” standard — which holds that perfect judgment is not required, but merely that a decision maker in possession of a certain set of facts acts in a way that is considered “reasonable.” There is little to quibble with here as a general principle. But surprisingly, Rouleau simply shrugs off the government’s refusal to release the key legal opinion it received suggesting it met the legal threshold to invoke the act. Instead, Rouleau points to testimony from several witnesses — including the prime minister, attorney general and Clerk of the Privy Council — accepting that their own interpretation of this unknown advice was sufficient.
- Jesse Kline: Emergencies Act report a slap in the face to Canadians
- John Ivison: The Emergencies Act report lets the Liberals slip off the hook
There are other eyebrow-raising passages. For example, in his analysis of whether the government met the threshold set out in Section 3 of the act that a situation must be one that “cannot be effectively dealt with by any other law of Canada,” Rouleau concludes that the test is met on the basis of the modifier “effectively” as opposed to the verb “cannot.” In so doing, he essentially lowers the threshold for the act, giving a new basis for future governments to invoke the act rooted not in legal necessity, but administrative or operational incompetence.
It goes without saying that Rouleau is acutely aware of the extraordinary powers the Emergencies Act confers. Yet, despite his insistence that maintaining a high threshold for its use is important, this is not the only instance where his comments lean towards more, rather than less, deference to cabinet. In the recommendations portion of the report, he even goes so far as to suggest that the definition of “threats to the security of Canada” — currently incorporated by reference into the Emergencies Act from the CSIS Act — be removed. This is curious given that Rouleau had just finished concluding that the government was not constrained from appropriately invoking the act by relying on the existing definition. What effect could its removal have other than to provide the government with even more latitude than it already has?
Fortunately for Canadians, the Rouleau report does not represent the last word on the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act. The court of public opinion may be beyond sway. But from a legal standpoint, the Federal Court — and the two judicial review applications currently underway before it — will likely still have something to say. For the sake of posterity — and to discourage future use of the act — we should hope they reach different conclusion.”
Special to National Post
Aaron Wudrick is a lawyer and the director of the domestic policy program at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute
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Greencrow comments: My feelings yesterday after the release of the two shocking reports could be summed up in a comment I read on Twitter:
“I’m starting to think we might not win this…Trudeau’s quite a slippery fuck”.
But then I read a few op-eds and commentaries and realized that the POEC was just the political response of Parliament to the invocation of the Emergencies Act. It is NOT the legal or judicial response…even though Rouleau is a judge. As Wudrick says above. the Federal court has the matter before it including two applications by petitioners.
I don’t know why they even had a POEC due to the dangers of the matter being entirely corrupted and politicized–as it was. Unsubstantiated rumours that Rouleau is even a relative by marriage to Trudeau and a lifelong friend, not to mention a Liberal campaign activist/donor have abounded since the beginning. In a healthy constitutional democracy Rouleau would have been forced to confirm/deny these rumours of nepotism and/or recuse himself. But because Canada is now a morbidly/terminally corrupt/unhealthy pseudo democracy/outright dictatorship…that did not happen. The dubious judge continued to deliberate the matter and came up with his equally dubious report.
Then there is the matter that it appears only Greencrow, in all of Canada, is interested in. What happened to the man in the tan jacket? We saw photos of him standing in the front line before the police horses. Then we saw video of him being trampled by a police horse. Then we saw a photo of him lying motionless on the snow, surrounded by police. Am I craZy? Am I the only one who can see these photos/videos? Am I like the little boy in the parade line where the King wore no clothes and was fawned over by the rest of the crowd?
It appears to me that this is absolutely the single most important question to ask about the event. What happened to this man? If he is dead that means Trudeau’s invocation and orders resulted in a death…which must be investigated BY POLICE!
Folks. I don’t listen to the bastard’s voice…I can’t tolerate his mewlings so I never actually heard what he said yesterday but apparently he said “Somebody could have died” because of the actions of the demonstrators and that’s why he invoked the EA. Well, somebody DID die and not a word is being spoken about it.
Go to the last few seconds of the above video to see the clip of the “lifeless” man in the tan jacket being dragged by police through the snow towards the Chateau Laurier
NOTE: Every time I look at the photo above I see more details. Just this morning I noticed that the left leg of the Man in the Tan Jacket appears to be broken. Look at the unnatural angle and the dip in the shin bone. How did he die? IMO, from a horse hoof directly to the chest as is shown in the first photo. The impact of that hoof would instantly surely crush his ribs and heart. Will we ever know for sure? Not if the Turvert can help it!
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The plan, of course, is just the same as the plan they used so successfully during the 9/11 atrocity. Just refuse to acknowledge the existence of inconvenient evidence–like the collapse of Building 7 [not hit by a plane and not suffering any serious damage] hours after the original collapses–for instance.
The 9/11 perpZ just kept ignoring the Building 7 evidence and eventually it simply went away–dissolved into the mists of time. In fact, I did go back and do a search for the collapse of Building 7 on 9/11 and it has been almost completely scrubbed from the Internet. What remains are all lies. So you can see how this works folks. All of our human history has been subjected to these “edits”. Nothing about our human history can be believed! But, I digress….
So the ‘Man in the Tan’ Jacket is the “Building 7” of the Trucker Convoy event.
I have sent the photo of the Man in the Tan Jacket lying in the snow to the Trucker Convoy lawyers and even the lawyers hired by the Truckers and their supporters do not care to bring up this piece of slam dunk evidence for their case.
Why Not? It makes me think that these lawyers have been paid off and are merely gatekeepers for the Turvertian government.
The CSIS Report on Chinese Interference in Canada’s 2021 election
Then there’s the corruption symbiotic issue of the CSIS report, relased the same time as the POEC report in order to confuse Canadians. This report found that Trudeau lied in Parliament when he repeated over and over over the past months that China did NOT interfere with the 2021 Canadian selection.
Shockingly, [or not] there is absolutely NO information on the details of this report other than those hidden behind the Globe and Mail Elitist paywall. The taxpayer-funded CBC has nothing at all on the CSIS report other than the following: A video with no sound showing a CBC “expert” [spin doctor] being interviewed and the following headline/blurb:
https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/2173676611768
CSIS documents show Chinese strategy to influence Canada’s 2021 Election Globe and Mail reports
“We should be concerned and I think we should be having an informed conversation about what we are going to do next,” says international affairs and security scholar Akshay Singh.
So Trudeau claims that he didn’t know that the communist dictatorship in Beijing was working to get him elected. Really? So his intelligence service told other governments around the world about it, but didn’t tell him?”
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Greencrow concludes: The CSIS report could be a bigger bomb than the Rouleau Report…but we’ll never know–until the details are made available to Canadians. Surely, in most universes we’re familiar with…security agency evidence that foreign entities interfered with a federal election would immediately render that election null and void.
“In response to The Globe story, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told reporters at a Friday news conference that he expects CSIS to find out who is leaking the secret reports…” @globeandmail https://theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-chinese-diplomats-warned-canadian-friends-to-scale-back-influence/?utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Network+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links
But, we live in turbulent tyrannical Turvertian times. I saw a video just this morning where Turvert has insisted at a presser that, even though the Chinese DID interfere with our 2021 election, it did not mean that it was an invalid election. No evidence to support this assertion was presented.
I went back to Twitter to find that video clip but couldn’t locate it. If I do find it I’ll insert it here.
“…The Toronto-based Globe and Mail newspaper, citing classified Canadian Security Intelligence Service records, said China worked to help ensure a Liberal minority victory in the 2021 general election as well as defeat Conservative politicians considered unfriendly to Beijing.
The story said the spy service quoted one Chinese diplomat as saying Beijing likes it when Canadian political parties are fighting with each other, whereas if one has a majority, the party in power can easily implement policies that do not favour China.
The newspaper also said that, according to CSIS, Chinese diplomats are behind undeclared cash donations to campaigns, and have business owners hire international Chinese students and assign them to volunteer in election campaigns…”
In the meantime, the only positive result we can take away from yesterday’s Ottawa shit show was that the hatred of Turvert, already through the roof in Canada has skyrocketed ever further into the stratosphere. He cannot walk the streets of any city, town, village or even cow pasture in Canada…or anywhere in the world for that matter. Nobody in modern history has been more reviled. Now I’d like to see Paul Rouleau go on a speaking tour of Canada and see how HE fares.
Turvert liked blackface so much…little did he know he would become the ‘Tar Baby” of the world!
Stay tuned.
Greencrow as the crow flies 
It would be wonderful if the Governor General used the CSIS report on Chinese election interference as justification to nullify the last election and call a new one.
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Hi Ron: That would make logical sense. Perhaps that’s the plan “B” if any more scandal skeletons fall out of JFT’s voluminous closet.
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