Canada is planning to impose emergency measures not used for more than 50 years to cut off funding for truckers responsible for nationwide protests that have gridlocked the nation’s capital for weeks.Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday became only the second Canadian leader in peacetime to invoke the Emergencies Act, which gives Ottawa broad powers to end three weeks of protests across the country that have hit cross-border trade, angered the United States and brought the center of the capital to a halt.“This illegal occupation needs to end... the measure of success will be, can we get our supply chains back? Can we end the disruption to livelihoods of people who rely on trade to the United States?” Trudeau told reporters.Trudeau acted after concluding that law enforcement could not cope with the protesters, especially in Ottawa, where police have largely stood and watched truckers and demonstrators bring the city to a standstill.
As part of the act, Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland announced a slew of measures to choke off the truckers’ funding, saying they could lose their commercial licenses, insurance and access to bank accounts.“I suspect following the money and then turning the money off is probably a good strategy and not one that’s easily done... temporary short-term measures that wouldn’t normally be acceptable can be put in place,” Jack Lindsay, department chair for applied disaster and emergency studies at Brandon University in Manitoba.“I imagine this will start of week full of political discourse over whether the government overstepped or not.”Doug Ford, the premier of Ontario, the most populous of the 10 provinces, said he backed Trudeau’s decision.The last leader to invoke such measures was Trudeau’s father, Liberal Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, who clamped down in 1970 after a splinter group of militant Quebec separatists kidnapped a provincial minister and a British diplomat.
