Prime Minister Justin Trudeau told the Public Order Emergency Committee on November 25 that the threshold for invoking the Emergency Act was the threshold for the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency (CSIS) to launch a national security investigation. It should not be lower than the value, he said.
“When invoking the Emergency Act, the level of security threat thresholds that must be observed cannot be lower than if CSIS were proposing to monitor a single person. The threshold is the same. Do you agree with that?” asked Ewa Krajewska, an attorney at the Canadian Civil Liberties Association.
“Yes, I am,” Trudeau replied.
Federal officials and Liberal Party ministers have argued in a recent commission that the fact that CSIS did not view the protests as a threat to national security was irrelevant to the declaration of a public order emergency. rice field.
On November 21, CSIS Director David Bigeaux himself said his agency did not view the protests as a national security threat, but still encouraged Trudeau to use the act.
Trudeau and several federal officials and ministers said the CSIS Act has nothing to do with whether spy agencies can initiate investigations of potential threats to national security according to the threats defined in section 2 of the act. , which states that this does not translate to ratings. Whether there are broader national security threats under the Emergency Act.
The law requires that a threat, as defined in Section 2 of the CSIS Act, must exist in order to declare a public order emergency under the Emergency Act.
Trudeau and others have stated that there were threats under section 2c of the law relating to threats or acts of serious violence for ideological motives.
Prime Minister cites presence of children at protests in Coutts, Alberta, and arrests and seizures of weapons, citing “trucks used as potential weapons” and children used as “human shields” I gave an example.
Even if CSIS was not aware of such threats, the Commission was not informed of the agency or authority that specifically determined 2c was met.
However, Justice Minister and Attorney General David Rametti told the committee on November 23 that the emergency law did not give CSIS decision-making powers and that this was in the hands of the Cabinet.
Along with the CSIS Director, other security and intelligence officials, including RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lackey, who testified on November 16, testified in an investigation that the protests did not represent a threat to national security.
Superintendent Pat Morris, chief of intelligence for the Ontario Police Department (OPP), told the commission on Oct. 19 that his unit at some point assessed that the protests “potentially” pose a threat to national security. However, he said he felt uncomfortable with the wording.
“I spoke to a colleague at the Canadian Security Intelligence Agency about it. [RCMP] Integrated National Security Enforcement Team [INSET]and they haven’t seen anything that has pushed them to their limits regarding what they see as a threat to Canada’s security,” he said.
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Noé Chartier is a reporter for the Epoch Times based in Montreal. Twitter: @NChartierET Gettr: @nchartieret