He only bet when he showed up. And it seems to have won in the court of reasonable public opinion.
Voluntarily seated for 5.5 grueling hours as the grand finale of a nationally televised inquest, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau walked away from the Emergency Act inquiry on Friday without seriously damaging his case for invoking unprecedented police powers against a perceived threat for the security of the February occupation of the convoy and the border blockades.
For those of us paid to watch this Prime Minister, there was ample reason to be skeptical that he could survive for long in the glow of a legal beating under oath without resorting to his usual fixation on reciting a script instead to answer important questions consistently.
But faced with an array of lawyers representing very different clients, Trudeau ditched his inner teleprompter and delivered a surprisingly calm, reflective and confident performance.
That’s just the optics, of course. The essence of his appearance is obviously more important. And in that sense, Trudeau did well despite some glaring omissions in his answers.
True, Trudeau conceded, part of his justification for acting was in anticipation of violence that ultimately never developed, rather than an actual threat.
The prime minister also acknowledged that the occupation does not meet the definition of a security threat from which Canada’s spy agency must deploy emergency powers. But, Trudeau insisted, it still met the government’s threshold for the move.
And Trudeau did admit that border blockades were lifted even before the Emergency Act went into effect.
But under cross-examination, the intervening lawyers failed to poke major holes in the Prime Minister’s narrative of emergency action.
The much-anticipated showdown between Trudeau and the Freedom Convoy legal team collapsed when his lawyer wasted valuable time reading anti-vaxxers into the record, prompting Trudeau to eloquently defend vaccine mandates.
And the drowsy array of lawyers representing police, city, constitutional and provincial governments peppered the proceedings with vexing questions rather than breathing new life into the big man’s testimony in the inquiry’s final hours.
In the end, Trudeau emerged as a prime minister who appeared to have done his due diligence in gathering security information before being provoked to protect public safety.
Trudeau’s testimony paints a picture of a prime minister bombarded with alarms and warnings about potential security concerns to a soundtrack of air horns blanketing downtown Ottawa and editorials blaring against federal overreach.
The introduction of the Act does not appear, as some (myself included) have suspected, to have been a knee-jerk reaction by a cabinet which had not considered the serious consequences of its introduction.
Trudeau noted that he was fully aware that with the introduction of the law, he would face an investigation to justify his decision, as mandated by the enabling legislation.
Far from prompting frequent use of the law against weaker protests, he argued, the spectacle of facing an investigation and the risk exposure it brings to a sitting prime minister is a fear factor sufficient to discourage its use. without hermetic protection.
So now Justice Paul Rouleau must spend a headache-filled recess deciding whether the Trudeau government meets the legislative criteria to invoke the Emergency Act.
Armed with evidence that the RCMP wanted to keep the Act in place beyond the eight days it was in effect, and a director of CSIS who enthusiastically endorsed its implementation, Trudeau had a defense against any accusations that he misled the Act when it was introduced. before taking the position.
But his strong performance at the inquiry is another buffer against being recognized for his personal and political recklessness in making this move.
To the largely disinterested public that watched the February protests disintegrate in tandem with the introduction of the Emergency Act, the ends will likely have justified the means, even if Rouleau decides that the federal government lacks sufficient legislative authority to invoke The law.
In the court of public opinion, taking Trudeau’s position appears to have been a winning strategy.
This is the most important.
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