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Rupa Subramanya: Canada's democracy died a little Friday afternoon

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Is Canada turning into an electoral autocracy?

I ask this question in all seriousness. We’ve just witnessed the final chapter to the Emergencies Act invoked almost a year ago by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Friday afternoon declared legitimate in the report by Commissioner Paul Rouleau who headed the Public Order Enquiry Commission.

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Let’s not forget that the role and power of the commission was severely circumscribed from the outset, as enshrined in the legislation. Even had he wished to, Rouleau had no authority to comment on the legality or lack thereof of invoking the emergency in any manner that would be legally binding. In other words, as Rouleau himself says, it’ll be up to the Federal Court to interpret his findings as they see fit, which could include just ignoring them. None of his recommendations are binding on the government. After an appropriate public relations response already undertaken by Trudeau on the afternoon it was published, with supporting players in the cabinet, officials and other sycophantic observers no doubt in the pipeline over the coming days, the government can quietly put the report on a shelf to gather dust.

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It’s unfortunate that the report largely bought into the official government and mainstream media narrative, more or less whole. In other words, the commissioner accepted the government’s rationale that it had reason to fear a public order emergency would arise in the absence of draconian measures. From this, it’s a very short leap to saying that invoking the emergency was legitimate, at least in terms of the narrow remit that the commission enjoyed. But think about this hypothetical: suppose the report had found that the Trudeau government hadn’t met the threshold required to invoke an emergency? Nothing legally consequential would have happened.

It’s ironic that Canadian progressive elites wring their hands at anti-democratic tendencies and media complicity in propagating establishment narratives in other countries, but fail to look within, and instead cheer on seriously problematic democratic backsliding at home. The events of the last year seem to confirm that whoever holds the balance of power in the House of Commons can pretty much do what they want, even suspending our fundamental civil liberties, with little or no consequence, confident that checks and balances in our system, with an unelected upper house with low democratic legitimacy, and a largely compliant court system, will largely ratify whatever the government does.

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To make the situation even crazier, the Trudeau government actually lost the popular vote in the last two elections and governs with a minority, propped up from the outside by the NDP. In other words, a government that reached for the ultimate power any government could hold — of declaring an emergency — did so knowing that not only the majority, but actually a plurality of Canadians, had voted against them in the last two elections.

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Reading between the lines of the Rouleau report, there is the merest hint of criticism of Trudeau, in referring to the infamous address in which he referred to the protestors as a “small fringe minority” of people who hold “unacceptable views.” The report acknowledges that these remarks served to “energize” the protesters, while stopping short of directly blaming Trudeau for his central role in creating a highly polarized atmosphere.

What’s more, Rouleau specifically notes that messaging by politicians, officials, and the media ought to have been more “balanced” and should have drawn “a clearer distinction” between peaceful protesters and others. In the context of a mildly written report which ultimately exonerates the government, this is a strong implicit criticism of both politicians and the media. Yet despite this rebuke, the report in the end accepts the mainstream narrative — with its built-in justification for the emergency.

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Whether or not Rouleau’s findings are defensible, given the terms of reference within which he operated, is a matter for legal and constitutional scholars. But what is beyond doubt is the corrosive effect it will have on our democracy, which is already reeling from a failure of trust in our elected officials and our institutions. Those who opposed the emergency, whether or not they supported the Freedom Convoy, are going to feel, with some justice, that the report is ultimately rubber stamping what the government did, and that apart from the ballot box, there are very few checks and balances in our system. The end result is to degrade the legitimacy of our democracy, and that’s a fundamentally dangerous direction to head in.

For the moment however, the commission report is a public relations win for Justin Trudeau, who remains the ultimate teflon man. The health of our polity is doing rather less well.

National Post

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