Trudeau: Just Kidding!

 

The timing of Trudeau’s announced cancellation of the Emergency Act suggests the main reason was that it was about to get voted down in the Senate.

The harm caused to the banking system might have been handled by simply eschewing this power and freeing all seized accounts. Reputedly, this was already happening.

But Trudeau’s announcement happened in the middle of the Senate debate, before the vote. It seems about the time it should have been clear to an inside observer how the vote was about to go.

Had the Senate voted down the measure, Trudeau would have been in a tough situation. He had called it a confidence vote in the Commons—lose the vote, and he would be obliged to resign. There is no such thing as a confidence vote in the Senate, but saying it is a confidence vote is saying the government does not believe it can govern without it. Therefore, there would be calls for Trudeau to resign, and it would look irregular if he did not; perhaps it would even become a constitutional crisis.

It would also support the argument that Trudeau’s actions up to that point were improper, if not illegal.

So pulling the Act may have dodged him a bullet.

Does all this harm Trudeau politically? It looks as though it won’t. I have seen the argument that, by withdrawing the Act so soon, Trudeau counters claims that he was power-hungry or overreacting. Since it never got to the vote in the Senate, people may never know if this was the real reason.