Declaration of Emergency committee  I didn't say that the laws were not adequate. I said that the laws were not applied effectively to deal with the emergency.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Our view is that the laws that were on the books were not effective at dealing with the emergency and that we needed new laws—these measures that we implemented, that we enacted—in order to help the police and financial service providers to deal with the emergency. The government is obviously looking at a “lessons learned” exercise.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I agree with you, yes.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I can tell you that my department drafted all of the orders related to the emergency. There was a proclamation, a declaration, an order and a regulation, and all four were made public. There were no secret orders related to the emergency that were taken.

Declaration of Emergency committee  From the government.

Declaration of Emergency committee  From all of government.

Declaration of Emergency committee  It does, yes.

Declaration of Emergency committee  It does not.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Freedom of expression is a freedom under our Charter of Rights and Freedoms but there are necessary limits to that, so hate speech is not protected and violence is not protected. Ms. Watts would be happy to provide more detail on the charter background if you're interested.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I can't provide a yes-or-no answer to your question, because the test is not whether we exercised every piece of legislation in the country. The test is whether those laws were being used effectively to deal with the emergency, and our view is that they were not.

Declaration of Emergency committee  That's an “application of the law” issue. The laws were being applied—

Declaration of Emergency committee  —in different places, but they were not dealing effectively with the emergency.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Thank you, Mr. Chair. Good evening, everyone. Honourable joint chairs and committee members, thank you for the invitation to speak. I want to cover three points in my opening remarks. First is the test to invoke the Emergencies Act. Second, I want to speak to the temporary measures.