RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki makes her way to the Standing Committee on Public Safety and National Security, in Ottawa, Monday, Oct. 31, 2022. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld
OTTAWA – RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki is expected to testify this morning at the public inquiry into the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act last winter.
Ottawa invoked the act for the first time in mid-February after nearly three weeks of protests against COVID-19 restrictions that had gridlocked downtown Ottawa and inspired border blockades elsewhere.
The act, which came into law in 1988, allowed the government to provide police with extraordinary powers to resolve an emergency situation, and required that a public inquiry be stood up to investigate the decision.
Emails tabled as evidence at the Public Order Emergency Commission had suggested that before the emergency declaration, Lucki felt not “all available tools” had been exhausted in the police response to the protests.
Lucki is expected to begin testifying alongside deputy commissioner for federal policing Mike Duheme in the morning, and Curtis Zablocki, the RCMP’s deputy commissioner in charge of Alberta, is next on the witness list.
Hearings in the public inquiry began in mid-October and are expected to conclude at the end of next week, with a final report due to Parliament in February.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 15, 2022.
