Parliamentary report on Emergencies Act decision is long past due — with no clear delivery date

A massive pile of documents that had to be translated into both official languages before they could be considered held up their work, and as one senator remarked this week, waiting for that bottleneck to ease could take a very long time.

Now that an index of the documents has been compiled in both official languages — which itself is hundreds of pages long — the committee members have agreed that the arduous journey toward putting pen to paper will finally continue on May 21.

3 months agoA federal judge says the Canadian government's use of the Emergencies Act in early 2022 to clear self-described Freedom Convoy protesters from Ottawa was unreasonable and infringed on their Charter rights.

Then came the fateful June 2023 decision that all documents produced for the Public Order Emergency Commission, which had months earlier released its own final report, should be available in both English and French.

Conservative MP Larry Brock said the committee could "walk and chew gum at the same time," but he didn't feel comfortable producing a report without the "full participation of my francophone colleagues."

Host Catherine Cullen talks to one of the key figures in that important chapter in Canadian history — former justice minister David Lametti — about the ruling, as well as his decision to leave politics.