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OTTAWA (LifeSiteNews) — In an extremely rare decision, the Trudeau government agreed to waive Cabinet confidentiality and release the evidence it used to justify invoking the Emergencies Act to crush the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa earlier this year.
“The Government of Canada has responded to a request from Commissioner Paul Rouleau and agreed not to claim Cabinet privilege over the documents that Cabinet considered in making the decision to declare a public order emergency and implement special measures for dealing with the emergency in February 2022,” the Public Order Emergency Commission revealed in a Tuesday press release.
“This exceptional step recognizes the fundamental importance of the Commission’s work and how critical these documents are in inquiring into why the Government declared a public order emergency,” Co-Lead Commission Counsel Shantona Chaudhury and Jeffrey Leon said.
“On behalf of Commissioner Rouleau, we took the position that Cabinet documents must be released to facilitate the Commission’s examination and assessment of the basis for the Government’s decision to declare the emergency and fulfil the Commission’s mandate,” they added.
The press release notes that of the “371 federal Commissions of Inquiry” called since the Confederation of the country, “this is only the fourth time that a public inquiry has been given access to Cabinet confidences.”
“It is in the public interest that this Public Inquiry be fully informed of the circumstances that led to Cabinet’s decision to declare the emergency and adopt the measures,” Chaudhury and Leon said.
“We appreciate that the Government has acknowledged this and cooperated by making this voluntary disclosure. This is an important step in moving the Commission’s work forward.”
As reported by LifeSiteNews, the Public Order Emergency Commission was established April 25 to launch an inquiry into Trudeau’s controversial use of the Emergencies Act in response to the anti-COVID mandate Freedom Convoy protest that lasted for three weeks in February.
While the investigation is purportedly “independent,” many have questioned if that is the case after it was revealed that the judge Trudeau appointed to oversee the inquiry has ties to the Liberal Party.
Since the inquiry began, Trudeau’s government has been caught spreading a number of falsehoods with respect to the Freedom Convoy, including the now-debunked claims that law enforcement asked Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act, that the protest was largely funded by foreign interests, that members of the Convoy took part in an arson attack, and that many of the backers had links to terrorism and extremism.
When Trudeau invoked the never-before-used Emergencies Act, he was able to deploy the national police force to physically end the protest and instruct financial institutions to freeze the bank accounts of those involved in the protest without a court order.
These actions, among others, caused a firestorm in the Canadian political landscape, with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association decrying that the move “seriously infringe[ed] the Charter rights of Canadians.”