Many people in this country are reeling. Parliament has now approved the use of the Emergencies Act, keeping measures in place until mid-March.
This is an extraordinary development, and one that’s generated many questions from the public. What does it mean to live under the Emergencies Act? Who will it impact? What does it mean for protest movements going forward? And: What does it say about the state of our democracy?
To unpack these questions, I reached out to Ryan Alford. He’s a constitutional law expert, a professor at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at Lakehead University, and the author of Seven Absolute Rights: Recovering the Historical Foundations of Canada’s Rule of Law. Here, he offers some analysis of this historic moment in Canadian history.
For people still getting up to speed, what happened last night?
Parliament, as required by the Emergencies Act, met within seven days of the invocation of the act by the government, to confirm that the act should remain in force for a period of up to 30 days. What that means is that one chamber of Parliament has approved the continuing operation on the Emergencies Act; the Senate will need to debate this and vote on this as well. With that approval, the cabinet can continue to issue regulations that have the force of law, without any oversight from Parliament, for 30 days beginning with the proclamation of the Emergencies Act last week.