Senator Gold: Thank you for your question. I won’t belabour the point to repeat some of the things I said.

We live in a federal country. The City of Ottawa is under municipal jurisdiction as far as Wellington Street is concerned. In terms of the highways, it is the jurisdiction of the Province of Ontario. And the federal government has jurisdiction. What happened was a series of events that led to a situation being out of control, a situation where local authorities — and that includes the provincial authorities — were simply incapable of responding effectively. There will be time in the processes set out in this act to look more comprehensively at what could have been done differently, how the police might have acted differently, how the province might have acted differently and how the federal government might have acted differently. But three weeks ago, the federal government and the Parliament of Canada did not have the tools to assist local police to get the job done. The Emergencies Act provided tools that no level of government would have otherwise been able to use, whether broadening the requirements of reporting to FINTRAC vis-à-vis the funding or providing other tools like directing tow truck operators to clear the streets — measures which were not invoked by any other level of government. Yet the result of this was to keep this city at siege.

As I’ve tried to explain, the federal government was in regular consultation all the way through the beginnings of this protest and tried to do its best to support and did, in fact, provide support through the RCMP and other local police. Unfortunately, it reached a situation that had become simply impossible for local authorities, using the tools that they had at their disposal or that were provided at their disposal by their provincial governments, to manage the situation. That’s why the government acted. It wasn’t doing nothing; it was providing ongoing support. It was an ongoing dialogue in all of the relevant instances. But it reached a point where it affected the government as a whole, and it is the role of the federal government to step in under those circumstances.