By
March 15, 2022
-Western Standard
Parliament has opened an unprecedented inquiry into Liberal actions against the Freedom Convoy, says Blacklock’s Reporter.
The 11-member panel has one year to determine why the Liberals invoked extraordinary police powers against truckers.
“In my opinion our discussions should be in public when they can be,” said Bloc Québécois MP Rhéal Fortin (Riviere-du-Nord, Que.).
Canadians expect at the inquiry to avoid secret hearings “without good reason,” he said.
The Liberals on Feb. 14 invoked the Emergencies Act to declare truckers’ blockade of Parliament an “illegal assembly.”
Police arrested 197 protesters and froze the bank accounts of 257 individuals and trucking companies worth at least $7.8 million, by official estimate.
The declaration of a national emergency was lifted Feb. 23. Under the Act a joint committee of the Commons and Senate must “cause an inquiry to be held into the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued and the measures taken for dealing with the emergency” and report within 360 days.
Liberal appointees on the 11-member committee include Sen. Gwen Boniface (Ont.), former Ontario Provincial Police commissioner; Sen. Peter Harder (Ont.), former government representative in the Senate; MP Yasir Naqvi (Ottawa Centre), former Ontario attorney general; MP Arif Virani (Parkdale-High Park, Ont.), former Crown lawyer; and MP Rachel Bendayan (Outremont, Que.), a former corporate lawyers.
Conservative appointees are Sen. Vernon White (Ont.), former Ottawa chief of police; Sen. Claude Carignan (Que.), a lawyer; MP Larry Brock (Brantford-Brant, Ont.), a former Crown prosecutor; and MP Glen Motz (Medicine Hat-Cardston, Alta.), a retired police inspector.
“The responsibilities of this committee are very, very serious,” Motz said yesterday.
“We all recognize that.”
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