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Pierre Trudeau did far worse with the War Measures Act, which gave the government sweeping powers of arrest and detention without trial. Whether this will be a

Pierre Trudeau did far worse with the War Measures Act, which gave the government sweeping powers of arrest and detention without trial. Whether this will be a bad look on the government's part (from the public's perspective) depends on whether they can resolve this without incident. Unclear if the protestors will be able to dig in further if they're arrested for the various city laws they've broken. I suspect that if Trudeau enforces Ottawa laws (which the police haven't), then stands down, this won't hurt public perception.

BeefWellington 5y ago
To add on to this, the Emergency Act was designed to replace the War Measures Act explicitly because of what Trudeau Senior did. It has a TON of caveats to it and requires ongoing review and is time limited. Nothing that is done under the Emergency Act is allowed to contravene the constitution. The posters here decrying this as authoritarian don't understand anything about Canadian law, experience, or mindset and are going by what they're fed by their individual media source of choice. The War Measures Act invocation by Pierre Trudeau was one of the most singularly divisive moments (some would argue it was necessary, some would argue the opposite) in Canadian history, and made parliament realize they needed to rein in the Prime Minister's powers.