Carney pledges to invoke emergency powers to fast-track his pet projects
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On Feb. 12, 2025, then-Liberal leadership contender Mark Carney rallied supporters in Kelowna. During his remarks, he pledged:
“It’s something that my government is going to do, is to use all of the powers of the federal government, including the emergency powers of the federal government, to accelerate major projects that we need in order to build this economy and take on the Americans.”
Now that Carney is prime minister, his remarks take on new significance. His willingness to invoke emergency powers for economic projects contradicts the intended purpose of the Emergencies Act and raises serious concerns about executive overreach.
The Emergencies Act was enacted in 1988 under then-prime minister Brian Mulroney to replace the War Measures Act, last invoked by Pierre Trudeau in October 1970 during the FLQ crisis. At the time, the CBC observed, “Canada looked more like a police state than a democracy on Oct. 13, 1970.”
 If Carney can override laws for his pet projects, what’s stopping him from suspending democracy next? |
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The McDonald Commission, launched in 1977 to investigate illegal RCMP activities, found evidence of misconduct, including a covert operation in which agents burned down a barn and blamed the FLQ. These revelations underscored the need for clearer oversight of emergency measures, leading to the creation of CSIS in 1984 and the Emergencies Act in 1988. The act explicitly defines four conditions for invoking emergency powers: espionage, sabotage, serious violence beyond police control or an attempt to overthrow the government.
Nowhere does the act authorize emergency powers for “accelerating major projects” or confronting economic challenges from foreign nations. Carney’s reference to emergency measures for economic policy reflects a troubling trend—redefining “threat” and “crisis” to justify extraordinary powers meant for extreme national emergencies.
The Liberal government has already demonstrated a willingness to misuse emergency powers. On March 13, 2020, then-prime minister Justin Trudeau urged Canadians to “flatten the curve” for two weeks in response to COVID-19. At that time, only one Canadian had died from the virus. Nevertheless, Trudeau considered invoking the Emergencies Act, canvassing provincial premiers about the necessity of emergency federal powers. The premiers rejected the move, preventing Ottawa from overriding provincial authority.
Two years later, on Feb. 14, 2022, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act in response to protests over pandemic mandates. There was no property damage, no physical violence and no determination by police that the Ottawa demonstrations constituted a riot. Neither police nor intelligence agencies requested the invocation of emergency powers. The Windsor border blockade—one of the government’s key justifications—had already been cleared by law enforcement the night before the act was invoked.
Despite the lack of legal justification, the government pushed ahead. The invocation allowed financial institutions to freeze the bank accounts of protest participants and donors without due process. While supporters justified it as necessary, its legality was widely questioned. The Emergencies Act required a judicial inquiry to determine if the government had been justified in invoking it.
In fall 2022, the Public Order Emergency Commission, led by Justice Paul Rouleau, held hearings. In his final report, Rouleau concluded the government met the high threshold for invoking the act but admitted, “I have done so with reluctance.” He further acknowledged, “I did not consider the factual basis (for invocation) to be overwhelming” and that “reasonable and informed people” could have reached the opposite conclusion.
In January 2024, Justice Richard Mosley ruled that the 2022 invocation of the Emergencies Act was unconstitutional. He found that the freezing of bank accounts was done in an entirely ad hoc manner and that the government had failed to meet the legal requirement under Section 3 of the act, which states that emergencies should only be declared when circumstances cannot be effectively managed under existing Canadian law.
Mosley also ruled that the justification for invocation was legally insufficient, as the act does not include “economic disruption that resulted from the border crossing blockades, troubling as they were.” The government immediately appealed the ruling.
Carney’s approach as prime minister aligns with a broader pattern of expanding emergency powers beyond their legal intent. Given the Trudeau government’s past consideration of the act in 2020 and its unconstitutional invocation in 2022, Carney’s pledge to use emergency powers for economic projects raises further concerns about the erosion of legislative safeguards.
If the Emergencies Act can be reinterpreted to fast-track infrastructure projects, what stops future governments from invoking it to bypass parliamentary scrutiny on other issues? The precedent is clear: what was once a measure of last resort is being reshaped into a political tool.
What once required an existential national crisis may now be used to fast-track federal pet projects. If so, the Liberals will have succeeded in making emergency rule Canada’s new normal.
Ray McGinnis is Senior Fellow with the Frontier Centre for Public Policy. He is the author of Unjustified: The Freedom Convoy, the Emergencies Act and the Inquiry that Got It Wrong.
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