Ontario’s deputy premier and former solicitor general has come to the defence of the federal government after its unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act was ruled to be a violation of constitutional rights.
Speaking in Burlington, Ont., Sylvia Jones — now the province’s health minister — said people in Ontario should not be “held hostage” by invasive and disruptive protests.
On Tuesday, the Federal Court ruled Ottawa’s use of the Emergencies Act to end to so-called “Freedom Convoy” in 2022 was “unreasonable.” The government used the unprecedented and wide-sweeping law to help it break up a weeks-long demonstration that was set up in downtown Ottawa.
Around the same time, the Ford government in Ontario declared a state of emergency over blockades at the Ambassador Bridge between Windsor and Detroit.
“I continue to believe that we need to ensure that demonstrations don’t impact communities in a very visceral way that impacts our economic and our social pieces,” Jones said, speaking after the ruling on the federal laws.
While the federal government was ultimately found to not to have been justified in its decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, the Ford government faced criticism for not taking enough action.
Ontario Premier Doug Ford did not declare a state of emergency for the first weeks of the Ottawa occupation and only after the Ambassador Bridge was blocked. Former Ottawa Mayor Jim Watson testified during the Emergencies Act inquiry that Ontario was absent from key meetings, delaying the end of the demonstration.
Jones said she was confident with the decisions Ontario made at the time.
“We had ambulances and fire trucks that literally could not go on certain roads –so something had to be done,” she said.
The federal government is set to appeal the ruling.
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