Premier Doug Ford going to court to fight summons to testify at Emergencies Act Commission
the federal government’s use of the Emergencies Act – after refusing multiple requests to provide interviews or testify voluntarily.is looking into the federal government’s unprecedented use of its emergency legislation to crack down on the anti-vaccine mandate protests that paralyzed downtown Ottawa and key border crossings earlier this year.
The statement says Ontario has provided the commission with an extensive report on the province’s key actions, and produced hundreds of documents, including key cabinet documents, while offering up two senior bureaucrats to be called as witnesses. Just last Monday, Mr. Ford told reporters he had not been asked to appear before the inquiry. His office now says he was asked to testify only after he made those comments. The commission did ask for an interview with him and Ms. Jones on Sept. 19, which they refused. Commission lawyers say in their letter that they repeated this request “a number of times.” They also said that as of last week, the Premier and Ms. Jones had declined their request to testify “for the moment.
“We have seen this government resist transparency and accountability in many contexts, but this one is a particularly shocking example,” she said. Sujit Choudhry, a lawyer for the Canadian Constitution Foundation, said it will be up to a court to decide whether invoking parliamentary privilege trumps the mandate of the inquiry’s commissioner, Justice Paul Rouleau, who is allowed to “summon before them any person and require the person to give evidence, orally or in writing.”