Opinion Althia Raj: Justin Trudeau says he regrets calling convoy protesters ‘a small fringe minority’
Justin Trudeau finally admitted Friday that he regretted not choosing his words more carefully when he labelled the convoy protesters on Parliament Hill last year a “small fringe minority.” His mea culpa came on the heels of Commissioner Paul Rouleau agreeing that the Emergencies Act was justified to deal with nationwide lawlessness — but he pointed the finger at the prime minister, saying his comments emboldened the demonstrators and suggested they made the occupation worse.
The prime minister’s comments may have been directed at a small number of people with reprehensible views, Rouleau said, but they “were interpreted by many as referring to all Freedom Convoy participants.” But after months of sidestepping the question and arguing he’d acted to keep Canadians safe during the COVID-19 pandemic and would “not back off,” Trudeau acknowledged he wished he had phrased his words differently.
Rouleau accepted the Liberals’ broader interpretation of the law, that what constituted threats to the safety of Canada didn’t have to be constrained to the definition of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service Act as defined by CSIS itself. The government met the threshold, he argued, because no other law could be used effectively, and said cabinet was right to consider factors such as economic threats that seriously endangered the lives and health of Canadians.
Although he found it would have been “preferable” for RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, on the eve of the invocation, to share details of the latest police plan, Rouleau believed it wouldn’t have made a difference. By then, cabinet had “valid” concerns about police leadership in Ottawa and had repeatedly been told about plans that never showed results.
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