The highly controversial use of the Emergency Act in Canada during last winter’s civil protest against Covid restrictions, known as the ‘Freedom Convoy’, and the subsequent criticism of the authorities, do not seem to have convinced them to behave differently in the future.

The whole affair resulted in the formation of a body, the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC), tasked with investigating how the law was used during a peaceful protest led by truckers in February 2022. Another job given to the commission was to advise (future) policy .

However, POEC Commissioner for Justice Paul Rouleau recently announced that the use of the law was justified, labeling the protest a genuine national security crisis that requires action to quell it.

And at least as far as the current government is concerned, the lesson learned is that the Law on Emergency Situations needs to be changed (“modernized” is the term used by Justice Minister David Lametti) to make it “easier” to use next time.

Lameti’s statement was given to POEC lawyers and is quoted in the summary of the interview, which states that the minister singled out two areas that, in his opinion, require legislative and policy reform.

This includes the Law on Emergency Situations, which Lametti said should be amended to make it “better suited to pandemics and health emergencies”. And another change where the concept of “modernization” comes in is to ensure that the law is worded in a way that will allow it to be used to address “online harm such as violent online rhetoric and funding.”

And while Lameti believes that the Law as it is allows the government to prevent “economic damage” – in the future, this law should be more precise in its definitions, “to include economic security in the framework of threats to national security.”

Canadian authorities have been able to enforce the Act through an extraordinary array of repressive measures against protesters and their organizers and supporters, including warrantless seizures, arrests and bank account freezes.

In a summary of Lameti’s interview published by POEC, the minister also said he believed invoking the Act last February was justified and effective in targeting those behind the protests, adding that determining whether an event is a national state of emergency is a political decision. includes several actors.