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The Rouleau Commission’s recommendations: Laundering the government’s agenda for censorship and expanded emergency powers

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16 minute read

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

By Ryan Alford

In this commentary, Ryan Alford examines how the Rouleau Commission’s personnel, agenda, and fundamental assumptions were all determined by Cabinet, the very body whose actions it was charged with assessing.

On August 31, Minister of Public Safety Dominic LeBlanc issued a six month progress report on implementing the recommendations of the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC), also known as the Rouleau Inquiry. It is notable for what it explicitly notes as being implemented, and for what remains to be implemented without significant comment. That said, it would be an error to begin with a comparison between what the Final Report of the Rouleau Inquiry recommended and what the federal government is now implementing. Rather, the critical point of comparison is between the Order-in-Council establishing the Commission – that is, Commissioner Rouleau’s marching orders from the Government – and the legislative agenda that is now being pursued.

The Emergencies Act itself calls for a mandatory public inquiry into “the circumstances that led to the declaration [of an emergency] being issued and the measures taken for dealing with the emergency.” Before the POEC, civil libertarians had understood this to mean that the mandate of any inquiry would be to examine whether the government had a reasonable basis to conclude threats existed to national security that could not be dealt with under any other Canadian law, and whether the emergency measures taken by the cabinet conformed to the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. In short, it was always assumed the Inquiry would have a tight focus on whether a national emergency, as defined by law, existed and whether the declaration (and every action taken under it) had been constitutional.

That reassuring assumption proved unfounded. In the Order of April 25, 2022, the Governor General in Council, on the recommendation of the Prime Minister, redefined the meaning of the “circumstances that led to the emergency”, which now included “the impact, role and sources of misinformation and disinformation, including the use of social media”. It also directed the Commissioner to “make recommendations, as pertains to the matters examined in the Public Inquiry, on the use or any necessary modernization of [the EmergenciesAct”.

Thus, cabinet dictated the fundamental assumptions that guided the Rouleau Commission. Two of these assumptions stand out from the others. First, that misinformation and disinformation on social media had a significant impact on the organizers and participants of the Freedom Convoy. Second, that the Emergencies Act might need “modernization”. Both of these premises are highly problematic and should not have been granted at the outset of the hearings (i.e.: prior to the admission of any evidence).

The hearings phase provided ample demonstration of the spuriousness of these assumptions. Witness testimony reiterated that the concerns of Freedom Convoy protestors were practical and political in nature. Many had been directly affected by vaccine mandates that curtailed their ability to work and travel. Others expressed the view that these mandates had expanded the powers of government beyond what was acceptable. While these might not have constituted an indisputable justification for a sustained and disruptive protest, there was no evidence presented in the hearings that the Freedom Convoy protests were predicated chiefly, or even substantially, on social media-borne misinformation or disinformation.

Second, the only testimony from witnesses that supported the notion that the Emergencies Act needs to be modernized came from those closest to the heart of the federal government, namely the National Security and Intelligence Advisor to the Prime Minister and the Clerk and Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council Office (PCO). The documents, chiefly emails, expressing their concerns about the purportedly antiquated requirements for declaring a public order emergency seemed to follow shortly after the Director of CSIS had circulated a memorandum conveying his opinion that these requirements had not been met.

Essentially, when the request to conclude that a public order emergency existed had been rebuffed by CSIS, the RCMP, and, most critically, the Intelligence Bureau of the Ontario Provincial Police, which was at the time coordinating on the ground intelligence collection, senior government bureaucrats started to express concern that the Emergencies Act and the CSIS Act were out of date.

Many observers found this claim unconvincing; not least because, unlike many pieces of public safety-related legislation – for instance, the Criminal Code – neither the Emergencies Act or the CSIS Act had been previously flagged as in need of updating as both are relatively modern pieces of legislation, enacted in 1988 and 1984, respectively. Notably, these laws themselves had been passed in response to the serious abuse of the War Measures Act during the October Crisis of 1970 and, in the decade that followed, the unlawful activities of the National Security Division of the RCMP, as detailed in the final report of the McDonald Commission (1981).

Accordingly, it was not surprising that, in the three decades since the enactment of these two laws, there had been no amendments that would have loosened the legislated restrictions on federal government’s ability to expand its own powers at the expense of Parliament and the provinces. The Order-in-Council nevertheless mandated that the Inquiry consider the issue of the “necessary modernization” of the Emergencies Act, and the Commission continued to take this directive seriously – even after it had become apparent that the argument that modernization was needed had originated in an internal dispute over whether a declaration of a public order emergency during the Freedom Convoy would be unlawful. (All of the police and intelligence agencies consulted by the government had concluded that the statutory and constitutional requirements for the use of the Emergencies Act had not been met).

What is even more problematic is the possibility that Cabinet had made the call to invoke the Emergencies Act on the premise that it was appropriate to measure the facts on the ground in Ottawa against the standard of an “evolved” interpretation of the Act (likely at the urging of senior bureaucrats). This may well have been the same logic employed by Minister of Justice David Lametti. We’ll likely never know for sure, owing to the Prime Minister’s assertion of solicitor-client privilege over a secret memo outlining the Justice Department’s legal argument for invoking the Act, which convinced the Cabinet to come to the opposite conclusion from the one stated in the Director of CSIS’ memorandum of the previous day.

Accordingly, by directing the Rouleau Commission to consider whether the Emergencies Act needed to be modernized, the Cabinet may have been clandestinely requesting that the Inquiry bless its novel (and secret) interpretation of legal definition of a public order emergency. This interpretation would, as such, receive a retroactive justification if the Commission were to conclude that the Minister of Justice had merely been anticipating the legislative changes needed to modernize the Act.

For obvious reasons, this request could not be made explicitly. If the Cabinet did, in fact, rely on the “evolved” definition in a closed-door meeting protected by Cabinet and solicitor-client privilege, this would be a constitutional abomination they’d rather not see come to light. The Emergencies Act specifies a narrow range of conditions that allow the Cabinet to assume the power of Parliament to pass laws – a problematic exemption from the basic principles of responsible government at best. If the Cabinet decided to surreptitiously amend the legislation that allows it to invoke these extra-parliamentary powers, it is effectively asserting the supremacy of the executive over the legislative branch. Cabinet cannot be confined within legal bounds if it reserves for itself a secret power to adjust these bounds outwards at will.

The second assumption embedded in the POEC’s mandate received more explicit treatment in LeBlanc’s progress report. It noted that the Final Report had charged the government with addressing “social media misinformation and disinformation”, and that the Commission had made specific recommendations that “the federal government work with its partners to further study the impact of social media . . . while addressing the serious challenges that misinformation, disinformation, and other online harms present to individuals and Canadian society”. Suffice it to say that Minister LeBlanc’s progress report makes it clear that this particular recommendation is being taken very seriously.

Of course, when the Cabinet directed the Rouleau Commission to provide recommendations related to social media misinformation, it had already reached firm conclusions about the need to implement far-reaching censorship of online expression. However, in purporting to merely be implementing the recommendations of a Public Inquiry, the federal government may be able to divert attention from the fact that some of the most contentious elements of this legislation have already been passed. This includes provisions that would allow the a committee established under the CRTC’s regulatory authority to assess and censor individuals’ social media posts. Additionally, it can point to the recommendations of the Rouleau Commission as a justification for the decision to funnel still more governmental funding to purportedly “neutral” civil society organizations and academic research centres that inevitably take the position that increased governmental censorship is necessary and justifiable. (See, for instance, Ontario Tech University’s Centre on Hate, Bias, and Extremism).

Indeed, this dynamic of finding purportedly neutral sources for highly contentious proposals was present within the Rouleau Commission itself. Having failed to obtain testimony that demonstrated the need for censorship and increased emergency powers in the Inquiry’s evidence phase, the Inquiry’s in-house Research Council commissioned (and paid for) submissions from a number of academics well-known for their advocacy, some of whom were affiliated with and even co-authored their submissions with notoriously politicized and ideologically biased organizations, such as the Canadian AntiHate Network.

Finally, when it came time for the culmination of the policy phase of the Inquiry, the roundtables charged with shaping the Commission’s recommendations were packed with experts with ties to the Trudeau government, notably exTrudeau Foundation CEO Morris Rosenberg. (Rosenberg was also the author of the report commissioned by the Privy Council Office that concluded that foreign interference had not affected the 2021 federal election; Rosenberg’s report concluded, contentiously, that “domestic actors” should also be a subject
of concern.)

On the question of whether the government will propose amending the Emergencies Act, LeBlanc’s progress report is considerably more evasive. This is likely because detaching the definition of a public order emergency from the definition found in the CSIS Act, as Rouleau recommended, would dramatically expand the federal government’s power to declare an emergency. If the legislative amendment tracks the Cabinet’s desires, the Emergencies Act could be triggered by any activity that threatens the “economic security” of Canada. As the more critical policy experts noted at the roundtable (and in their policy recommendations), this definition is practically limitless, as any disruptive protest (or strike, lockout, mass gathering, boycott, etc.) could have an “impact” on the national economy.

Accordingly, it seems likely that, before proposing such an amendment, the government will want to gauge the prevailing winds in Parliament. The surest indicator of unfavourable conditions would be the rigorous assessment of the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency, which has equal status under the Emergencies Act with the Public Inquiry, and should not feel any need to defer to its findings – particularly as the Rouleau Commission’s personnel, agenda, and fundamental assumptions were all determined by Cabinet, the very body whose actions it was charged with assessing.

The Special Joint Parliamentary Committee can serve as a neutral judge, and it should exercise independent judgment when compiling its own definitive report. The Committee will be an especially important arbiter of the key issue of whether the federal government, having expanded the scope of its emergency powers in secret, should receive retroactive benediction in the form of a newly amended Emergencies Act, which would encompass responses to “economic threats” (an illusory limitation, to be clear). Such an outcome would make Cabinet, and effectively the Prime Minister, our true sovereign.

About the author

Ryan Alford is a Senior Fellow of the Macdonald-Laurier Institute, a Professor at the Bora Laskin Faculty of Law at
Lakehead University, and a Bencher of the Law Society of Ontario. He was also granted the status of a Party by the Public Order Emergency Commission and appeared in that capacity before the Rouleau Inquiry.

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COVID-19

The Biden-Harris Administration Wasted Nearly One Billion on Misinformation

Published on

From the Brownstone Institute

By Ian Miller 

Biden, CDC Partners Literally Wasted a Fortune to Lie to the American People

The party of “Science” apparently misled hundreds of millions of people on the actual science surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. Stop the presses.

Starting in early 2020, the combined efforts of Dr. Anthony Fauci, the CDC, the Department of Health and Human Services, and their partners in the media caused an untold amount of damage to society and public health and might have even created conditions for increased Covid spread. How? By repeatedly, profoundly, and often purposefully communicating inaccurate information while spending hundreds of millions of dollars to get their preferred messages across.

Now, a new, massive 113-page report from the US House of Representatives Energy & Commerce Committee has detailed the remarkable abuses from the Biden-Harris administration and the manner in which they communicated during Covid. 

Biden, CDC Partners Literally Wasted a Fortune to Lie to the American People

The report details a number of unbelievable inaccuracies in 2021 coming from the Biden administration’s communications team and the CDC’s messaging apparatus. Fauci and Francis Collins’ National Institutes of Health were also responsible, creating guidance using taxpayer money, nearly $1 billion per the report, that misled millions of people and caused unimaginable harm in the process.

While the Biden-Harris administration’s public health guidance led to prolonged closures of schools and businesses, the NIH was spending nearly a billion dollars of taxpayer money trying to manipulate Americans with advertisements—sometimes containing erroneous or unproven information. By overpromising what the Covid-19 vaccines could do—in direct contradiction of the FDA’s authorizations—and over emphasizing the virus’s risk to children and young adults, the Biden-Harris administration caused Americans to lose trust in the public health system,” Committee Chair Cathy McMorris Rodgers (R-WA) said after the report’s release. “Our investigation also uncovered the extent to which public funding went to Big Tech companies to track and monitor Americans, underscoring the need for stronger online data privacy protections.”

One of the most damaging, and woefully incorrect messaging campaigns centered on vaccine efficacy against infection. As the report details, Biden’s “Stop the Spread” campaign was a pervasive marketing effort in conjunction with the CDC that claimed vaccines would end the pandemic by reducing infections. That had enormous knock-on effects, including decreasing trust in all vaccinations and ultimately harming public health.

“The entire premise of the Biden-Harris ‘Stop the Spread’ campaign was that if you got vaccinated for COVID-19, you could resume daily activities because they said vaccinated people would not spread the disease,” said Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations Chair Morgan Griffith (R-VA). “Despite lacking scientific basis, the administration bought into this CDC claim and misled the American public. As a result, vaccination coverage with other vaccines appears to have declined, I believe because of a growing distrust of information coming from our public health institutions.”

This campaign was even more disingenuous and purposefully misleading than previously realized. The “Stop the Spread” publicity blitz hid in plain sight a message from the CDC that even they didn’t know whether the vaccines actually stopped infection or transmission. The report shared a screenshot of a page from the Biden administration’s marketing that specifically said “science” wasn’t sure how well the vaccines worked against infection.

Yet the Biden administration made life-altering policy decisions such as vaccine mandates, discriminatory entry processes, and military vaccination requirements regardless. And that was in addition to the less quantifiable impacts like nudging millions of people to follow their preferred course of action.

CDC Guidance Exacerbated Existing Problems

The report also explains how the Biden administration relied heavily on guidance from the CDC, an organization that thoroughly disgraced itself during the pandemic. There were several examples highlighted, chief among them that CDC “experts” went far beyond what even the FDA claimed Covid vaccines could do.

Without evidence, the report says Biden’s marketing claimed that “COVID vaccines were highly effective against transmission.” Within just a few months, it was clear that all the available evidence pointed towards the exact opposite direction. Per the report, this had a “negative impact on vaccine confidence and the CDC’s credibility when proven untrue.”

The CDC also had “inconsistent and flawed messaging about the effectiveness of masks,” which created seemingly endless mandates and, again, overconfidence in an ineffective policy. Some of those mandates even continue to this day.

That’s just the tip of their misinformation. A wealth of data and public embarrassments for the CDC confirmed that the organization “consistently overstated the risk of COVID-19 to children,” the report states. That fear-mongering had disastrous consequences, from unnecessarily terrifying parents to prolonged school closures and lack of socialization—setting an entire generation of children back in the process.

Still, after being repeatedly and profoundly proven wrong, the CDC has demonstrated they’ve yet to learn their lesson. In late 2024, the CDC continues to recommend Covid-19 vaccines for babies starting at six months old. That makes the US a global outlier compared to European nations that have maintained at least some level of intellectual honesty.

How Do We Fix CDC Abuses?

The report detailed several recommendations to fix these organizations after their disastrous work during the pandemic. Even implementing just a select few, listed below, would do wonders for fixing the institutional rot that influenced these mistakes.

  • Congress should consider clarifying responsibility for evaluating the safety of vaccines and streamlining existing reporting systems for capturing vaccine injuries and adverse reactions.
  • HHS and its agencies should embrace a culture of transparency and accountability.
  • The CDC and federal public health officials should not attempt to silence dissenting scientific opinions.

Also highlighted in the report is how the CDC and NIH used their weight in their attempts to censor scientists who dissented from their preferred narratives. Beyond their mistakes, profound inaccuracies, and nearly unlimited spending, their censorship efforts are equally concerning.

As we learned during Covid, if there’s one thing “experts” hate, it’s being told that they were proven wrong. Instead of learning, adjusting, and apologizing, they move to censor, criticize and mislead. This new report is the latest confirmation of these unacceptable “mistakes.” And reaffirms the importance of ensuring they never happen again.

Republished from the author’s Substack

Author

Ian Miller is the author of “Unmasked: The Global Failure of COVID Mask Mandates.” His work has been featured on national television broadcasts, national and international news publications and referenced in multiple best selling books covering the pandemic. He writes a Substack newsletter, also titled “Unmasked.”

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Australian local council calls for ‘immediate suspension’ of mRNA COVID vaccines

Published on

From LifeSiteNews

By David James

The Port Hedland council cited a report by molecular virologist Dr. David Speicher that ‘evidences excessive synthetic DNA contamination in Pfizer and Moderna vaccine vials used for both adults and children.’

Councillors in Port Hedland, in Western Australia’s north-west, have called for the “immediate suspension” of mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, challenging federal and state government policy.

The council cited a report by molecular virologist Dr. David Speicher that “evidences excessive synthetic DNA contamination in Pfizer and Moderna vaccine vials used for both adults and children.” A council statement said testing revealed DNA contamination levels between “7 to 145 times higher than Australia’s Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) limit”.

In addition, the council claimed that Pfizer vials contain elements not initially disclosed to regulators. “The report raises serious concerns about potential long-term health impacts such as genomic integration, exponential cancer risks, and adverse outcomes due to synthetic DNA contamination.”

The research is just one of many investigations pointing to serious issues with the mRNA vaccines. For example, an analysis by David E Allen, honorary professor at the University of Sydney’s School of Mathematics and Statistics, found that all-cause mortality is up in Australia where vaccination rates are high, and that at least two thirds in the variation per region is explained by mass COVID-19 vaccination.

Troubling results are being replicated around the world. To cite one instance of many, researchers in Japan are warning that Covid mRNA shots are now “affecting every possible aspect of human pathology.” They have linked the Covid mRNA injections to increases in 201 types of diseases.

Rather than responding to the council’s concerns and investigating its claims dispassionately the Western Australian premier, Roger Cook, chose the bullying option. He told the Port Hedland council to “stick to its knitting,” whatever that means. He argued the council “should stay focused on the services and people of that community” adding that “it’s another example of that council lacking the focus on the issues which matter to their constituents … making sure they look after the people, not get distracted by these silly ideological debates.”

It was a ridiculous response, reported uncritically by the government funded media outlet the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC). Why is expressing concern about a health danger “ideological”? If anyone is being ideological, it is Cook. And surely such a potential danger would be “of concern” to the local community?

The ABC article was an example of the aggressive suppression of non-compliant views by Australia’s political and media elite. Neutral, disinterested reporting now seems all but abandoned in the mainstream media, replaced by commentary from journalists with no expertise.

Cook’s attack on vaccine dissenters has become a routine feature of public discourse. State and federal governments are stridently trying to divert attention away from what they did.

But the Port Hedland Council move is significant because it comes from the local level. When the upper levels of government are compromised, and the executive branch of government is out of control, the best hope of reviving some sort of democracy and focus on the interests of ordinary people may be at the municipal level. It is why anti-lockdown and pro-freedom activist Monica Smit is directing her interest towards council elections.

There is little doubt that there is a growing awareness in the Australian public that something is very wrong not only with the vaccines, but also the government’s response to dissent. Even powerful proponents of the vaccines are starting to feel unease, especially about the federal government’s proposed misinformation bill, a blatant attempt to impose censorship. Dr. Nick Coatsworth, a television doctor, senior health official and one of the most public figures in Australia’s Covid response, has warned against the ‘weaponization’ of misinformation to silence debate.

Australia’s local councils are the nation’s oldest layer of government. They are not mentioned in the Australian constitution because they were formed before it was written. As Australia’s political and government institutions deteriorate, the Port Hedland council is perhaps showing a way that some semblance of democracy might be restored.

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