Canadian parliamentarians on Monday (February 21st) approved the use of an exceptional law invoked last week by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end the historic challenge to public health measures.
Read alsoOttawa police crack down on antivax truckers
After days of debate in the House of Commons, MPs voted 185 to 151 in favor of the Emergencies Act, a last resort piece of legislation that can be used by the Government of Canada in case of “national crisis“. “A motion to ratify the declaration of crisis situation was adopted“, tweeted the House of Commons in the minutes after the vote. The Senate (upper house) must now debate it in turn.
“Declare a state of emergency immediately”
This law was invoked on February 14, for only the second time in Canada in peacetime, to end the anti-sanitary measures blockades that have rocked the country for three weeks, demonstrations which had according to the first minister nothing morepeaceful“. With this law,we want to leave the government the possibility of declaring a state of emergency immediately, but we give Parliament a week to decide“, explained to AFP the political scientist Daniel Béland of McGill University. The additional powers conferred by law, for example the freezing of the bank accounts of certain demonstrators, have been applied in recent days by government institutions, but the Canadian Parliament still had to “ratify the lawadded Geneviève Tellier, a professor at the University of Ottawa.
A minority, Justin Trudeau’s Liberals were able to count on the support of the New Democratic Party (NDP, left) to pass the motion despite the “reluctanceformulated on Monday by its leader Jagmeet Singh. The Conservative Party, whose leader was deposed during the crisis, and the Bloc Québécois (BQ) voted against the law, strongly criticizing the need to invoke it as the capital Ottawa was freed from protesters on Sunday during a major police operation. Earlier in the day on Monday, Justin Trudeau said the state of emergency “was not finisheddespite the end of the blockages, saying he was confident in the support of parliamentarians.