Mandryk: Far too much politics in Moe’s criticism of Emergencies Act

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Remember when Moe was so troubled by Tristen Durocher’s teepee protest he wouldn’t cross the street in front of the legislature to meet him?

Moe’s criticism of Emergencies Act overreach plays into the hands of the some of the worst elements facing us today. Photo by ERROL MCGIHON / Postmedia Article content

For the past two weeks, Premier Scott Moe has been insisting that healing political divisions in families over vaccination status is more important than divisive COVID-19 restrictions.

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Yet on Monday, he spent Family Day dwelling on political divisions.

“I guess it’s not surprising that the Liberals voted to support invoking the Emergencies Act,” Moe tweeted Monday. “But the NDP had the chance to hold them accountable and stop this abuse of power. They failed to do so. Never forget that.”

Nothing says healing like the craven politics of riling up the base to “never forget” at a time when we are already living in a tinderbox.

There again, Moe is bringing some people together. The Buffalo Party tweeted almost the exact same thing.

But such is Moe’s new-found affection for the civil liberties of those protesters 2,600 kilometers away in Ottawa that now sees him and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney contemplating taking the federal government to court over the “overreach” of using the Emergencies Act to supersede people’s right to “peaceful” demonstration.

Of course, this would not be the first time Moe and his Saskatchewan Party government go to court over people’s right to protest. Remember Tristen Durocher? Remember when Moe was so troubled by Durocher’s “illegal” teepee protest he wouldn’t cross the street in front of the legislature to meet him?

Was Durocher honking his truck horn all night, disrupting the sleep of the good folks in Regina Lakeview? Were he or any of his supporters harassing innocent shop owners, partying all night, blocking streets or peeing on war memorials? Did they scream at, threaten, assault and spit on reporters they demanded pay attention to them?

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Did they call for the overthrow of Moe’s democratically elected government? Were they encouraging similar insurrection everywhere else, including US border crossings, producing plots to commit murder?

Did they assault police officers or use their little kids as human shields?

Well, no. Like the Justice for Our Children Camp a year earlier, Durocher was clearly guilty of violating the Wascana Center Authority Act prohibiting overnight camping. That’s about as far as this particular insurrection went, but Moe’s government still went to court in an attempt to force him out.

This is not to suggest either the Ottawa police or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau have brilliantly handled the situation in the past month. History is unlikely to smile on Trudeau’s stubborn refusal to address trucker vaccine status that is the long-lost excuse for all this.

Nor is it to suggest there shouldn’t be legitimate debate over government overreach. Some Conservative Party of Canada MPs like former leadership hopeful Michael Chong are providing reasoned debate whether it is still needed after protesters were cleared out of Ottawa, as those were illegally blocking the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor and other border points.

Moreover, people need to consider the previous now established. Years or even decades when some future government invokes the Emergencies Act to break up human rights or environmental protests that are allegedly potentially violent, we will likely be revisiting this use of the act.

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But the first big problem with the Moe/Kenney position is the blatant hypocrisy. We see Moe deliberately ignoring the aforementioned illegal behavior of protesters resulting in hundreds of charges in Ottawa and closer to home in Coutts, Alta. We see, as first reported by Global News, Kenney writing to Ottawa asking for federal help with the Coutts situation.

Moe is suddenly bothered by policing overreach without justification? Then can the premier perhaps please finally explain why his government is unilaterally stripping policing powers from the Saskatchewan legislature’s Sergeant-at-Arms?

The far bigger problem, however, is how politically dangerous this has become.

Moe seems intoxicated by the national and even international attention he is getting for opposing Trudeau and his use of the Emergencies Act. There has been little regard for the reality that both the Ottawa and border protests were being driven by thugs now charged with serious crimes and financed by foreign entities hellbent on disrupting our democracy.

Really, is there anything more divisive then politically driven, self-interested leadership?

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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