Declaration of Emergency committee  Yes, and they engaged with the police in Alberta. As I said earlier, they were in touch with Sûreté du Québec and with the OPP.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The process was getting regular briefings as to what was happening on the ground. Once we received advice that things were under control and that local police forces could manage with their existing authorities, the government considered then whether it was time to revoke the orders.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I think the Ontario's emergency act is pretty broad and allows for a number of things. They took the orders they took under the emergency act. When you look at emergency legislation across the country, it's very different from province to province. B.C.'s for example deals mostly with natural disasters, or I think only with natural disasters, so they would have been in a difficult situation had they had to rely on their emergencies powers to deal with something like this.

Declaration of Emergency committee  No.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Yes, that's what I said.

Declaration of Emergency committee  If the case gets to the Supreme Court...

Declaration of Emergency committee  Yes, that's right. It was the banks that did the... It was the banks that froze the accounts.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The order creates an obligation for the bank and the bank makes its decision. It's in its discretion to act or not act, based on the information it has.

Declaration of Emergency committee  I'm going to ask my colleague Ms. Aitken to answer your question.

Declaration of Emergency committee  Up to February 14, it had still not been done.

Declaration of Emergency committee  As I said at the outset, the test isn't about whether it is necessary...

Declaration of Emergency committee  It's not that it couldn't be done, it's that it wasn't being done effectively, to use the words in the text of the Act.

Declaration of Emergency committee  The word “effectively” is used in the Act.

Declaration of Emergency committee  They were in effect. Yes.

Declaration of Emergency committee  What we looked at, when we looked at the Ontario emergency and the city's emergency and the injunctions, was that we didn't look at what just Ontario was doing. We were looking at what was happening across the country in every province. Some other provinces took measures under their emergency acts.