Commissioner Paul Rouleau of the Public Order Emergency Commission Friday released a report determining that the Canadian federal government’s usage of unprecedented emergency powers under the Emergency Powers Act to end the “Freedom Convoy” trucker protest that effectively occupied Canada’s capital for two weeks in February 2022 was justified. The report, however, states that the emergency powers could have been avoided if not for poor policing and federalism concerns. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the powers after threats against Parliament and the use of trucks barricading access to the Canadian border from the United States.

Rouleau found that the majority of the protesters were “exercising their fundamental democratic rights.” The report detailed failures in the policing and deterring of protests, attributing these failures to the heightened severity of the situation. The report states that the police should have communicated “with persons who continued to demonstrate, and discouraged them from continuing illegal activities,” thereby encouraging them to express their messages in a lawful manner. However, the report found that this strategy was not carried out effectively. Moreover, the commission found that the situational awareness of the federal government was poor, given there were “troubling signals about the character of the protests” that should have been apparent to the government.

Rouleau’s inquiry found that although the Freedom Convoy may not have met the definition of a threat to security as outlined by the Act, it was not unreasonable for the Canadian federal government to have interpreted their actions as such. Despite finding the government’s use of the Emergency Powers Act avoidable, Rouleau concluded that “in this case the very high threshold for invocation was met.” However, Rouleau came to this conclusion “with reluctance.”