the blockades that have snarled cross-border traffic and paralyzed the City of Ottawa.“Certainly,” responded Minister Bill Blair when asked Sunday if his government was prepared to invoke the Emergencies Act, rarely-used legislation that grants federal authorities exceptional powers to address national threats.“I want to assure you that we recognize the threat to Canada, to Canadians, to our livelihoods and to our prosperity that these protests represent.
This isn’t about vaccines anymore. This is something else and it is deeply concerning,” Blair told The West Block host Mercedes Stephenson Sunday.
Ottawa police have been ‘amazing,’ convoy protestors say, as calls for crackdown grow But Blair suggested the federal government would only take the exceptional measure – not invoked since the October Crisis in 1970 – after provinces exhaust “their authorities” and turn to Ottawa for more help.Blair, the former chief of the Toronto Police Service, added Canadians “need the police to do their job.”“To that end, we’ve been working to make sure they have the resources and the tools that they need to do it.