Declaration of Emergency committee  It is, and I think there's a difference to be made in terms of whether a law is charter compliant on its face, and whether in its application by police or others when they applied the law they did it in a charter-compliant manner. What we do at the Department of Justice is review the law for charter compliance, with an understanding of how it could be applied, but we're not applying them.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Exactly. They were proportional and they were very tied to the objectives, which were to bring an end to these illegal assemblies, the blockades and the occupation in Ottawa. They were proportional to the objectives. They were time limited, and they were very targeted.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That's correct. February 14 is when the declaration was issued. February 15 is when we took out the orders, and the 23rd is when they were revoked.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That's our understanding and that's, I think, set out in our charter backgrounder.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That's fair, yes.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That is fair. That's what I said earlier, yes.

Declaration of Emergency committee  It is and the objective was really to bring an end to them, so to the extent that people were financing the illegal blockades, we wanted to find a way to stop people from coming and—

Declaration of Emergency committee  —to stop the financing of those blockades.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That's correct. The obligation is on the financial institution to cease transactions with designated persons. A designated person is somebody who's participating in one of these illegal assemblies. Once they're no longer participating in the illegal assembly, then there's no longer an obligation to cease transactions.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The Department of Justice and I, in particular, took part in the discussions that led to the Act being invoked.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I think there has been testimony that has already explained that there were necessarily discussions in Cabinet. There were discussions among deputy ministers and with the RCMP. I took part in some of them. Generally speaking, that is how it happened. My colleagues also took part in a number of discussions with their clients, whether it was the RCMP, Public Safety Canada, or others.

Declaration of Emergency committee  We provide legal advice to the executive branch of government on all matters, and it's safe to assume that we have in this case. After the minister's appearance on April 26, I asked Heather and her office to prepare this document, because I thought it could be helpful to the committee.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I'm not going to tell you what the government does with the advice it gets from the Department of Justice. I think they're always happy to get our advice, but ultimately they make decisions with the benefit of that advice.

Declaration of Emergency committee  We've made this charter backgrounder available to the committee, and we're happy to speak to that document if there are some questions about it.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Whether we've provided legal advice to the government, I think, is not something I can share.