Declaration of Emergency Committee on April 26th, 2022

[Claude Carignan]

Minister, you said that the sources of the money were illegal.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

No, I…

[Claude Carignan]

If they were illegal, why did you release the accounts?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Mr. Carignan, you're putting words in my mouth. I said we wanted to cut off funding for the illegal protests at its source, the sources that were funding an illegal activity.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

The time is over.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

It's clear in the act, and it's clear in my answer.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you, Minister.

Thank you, Mr. Carignan.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

On a point of order, Mr. Chair....

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

I hear someone has a point of order.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

I have a rappel au Règlement. I'm practising my French, and in defence of the French language, I just want to note that I'm finding that the interpreters are having a difficult time when people are speaking over each other. I know I'm guilty of it, too, but I want to put it to the members that the interpreters are working hard late into the night here. We want to give them the ability to do their jobs, so we can hear.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

I would just say welcome to the club, Mr. Green. I'm always on translation.

[The Joint Chair, NDP, Matthew Green]

This is why I'm here. Let it be on the record that I am here defending francophone rights. Thank you.

[The Joint Chair, Bloc, Rhéal Fortin]

Thank you, Mr. Green. I understand the point you're making. We'll try to be careful.

Senator Harder now has the floor for five minutes.

[Peter Harder]

Thank you, Monsieur Fortin.

Minister, I'd like to follow up on Senator Boniface's questions. Could you describe your thinking on the advice that you were giving the government in the three weeks before the invocation of the act? At what point did you feel that the invocation of the act was not just the only but also the best choice available to the government?

As I asked your colleague, Mr. Mendicino, why did it take 24 days?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Thank you for the question, Senator Harder.

It was an unprecedented situation and obviously I will not divulge cabinet confidence—you're well aware of that—nor will I betray solicitor-client privilege. That being said, we watched the situation. We watched it evolve. We watched authorities try to deal with the situation with the tools they had in hand. We consulted all the way through, as my colleague Marco Mendicino pointed out. We consulted police forces. We consulted governments. We had letters from ministers from other provinces, from Alberta, for example, saying, “We need tow trucks; we can't handle this”.

We were taking all of this in. We invoked the Emergencies Act when it became clear to us that, first of all, the situation was national in scope, that we had met the threshold definitions under the act, and that the provinces or other local authorities were not capable of handling it on their own.

[Peter Harder]

Thank you.

Earlier in your testimony, you enumerated the powers that the Emergencies Act provided. Can you inform us as to from whom the pieces of consultation derived with respect to those enumerated powers? I presume that they weren't just in the Department of Justice or even in the federal government. What level of consultation was there with other jurisdictions that you're aware of?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

There was continual consultation with other jurisdictions and other police forces, both directly to people around the table but also through Commissioner Lucki and other officials.

The ideas that came up included specific tools that were identified. We needed tow trucks. There was simply a resistance amongst tow truck operators to participate. When the act came into force, magically these operators appeared. It was the same thing with respect to financing. We saw that there was a need to try to attack the sources of financing of this illegal activity, so the financing measures came into place.

[Peter Harder]

In those consultations, did you consult with provincial attorneys general?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

We did have a consultation report. Again, I'm not going to betray cabinet confidences. In particular, as you see from the report, the Minister of Public Safety and the Minister of Emergency Preparedness were probably the two who were out doing the most consultations.

[Peter Harder]

As is appropriate.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

Yes.

[Peter Harder]

This is my final question. In your statement, you said, “we monitored...every single day”. I'd like you to describe who the “we” is, because I would presume it's not just ministers of the Government of Canada.

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

You will see in the report we tabled in Parliament that there was an incident response group that included ministers but also included the commissioner of the RCMP. It also included public safety, public security and national security officials.

[Peter Harder]

When the invocation was revoked, my understanding is that this was done immediately after the advice was received by the government from that response team. Is that correct?

[David Lametti, Liberal, LaSalle—Émard—Verdun, QC]

I'm not going to betray cabinet confidence, but we have said publicly—I have said this evening and my colleague has said this evening—that we would not leave it in place a minute longer than necessary.