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Comment by arcticbull | Hacker News Reader

It's not, in Canada. The government may elect to invoke the War Measures Act [1]. Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2].

[edit] Posse Comitatus is more of an American thing - for the record the War Measures Act was subsequently replaced with the Emergencies Act [3].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_Measures_Act

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_Crisis

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergencies_Act

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> Pierre Trudeau did this when he drove tanks into Montreal to quash the Québécois nationalist terrorist organization, the FLQ in the October Crisis of 1962 [2].

Its been a while since my high school history class, but i don't think that's correct. If i remember correctly, the military troops involved in the flq crisis were at the request and under control of the province of quebec, not the federal government (under the constitution of canada, law and order is a provincial responsibility). Trudeau did temporarily suspend some civil liberties, in particular the right to habeaus corpus. However the tanks were entirely provincial not federal, so had nothing to do with trudeau and their deployment did not involve the war measures act. In fact, as far as i know, the prime minister isn't even allowed to prevent the province from requistioning military help, at most they can charge them money for it afterwards.

IANAhistorian.

More recently, the military was deployed against citizens during the Oka Crisis.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oka_Crisis

Highly recommend all Canadians take some time to read about the Oka Crisis, very interesting part of Canada's complicated history with indigenous relations. There's a 2020 film called Beans about a 12 year old Mohawk girl living through the heart of the crisis, thoughtful and powerful Canadian cinema.

The war measures act was repealed in 1988

Indeed, it was replaced with the Emergenices Act as I mentioned.

In fact Justin Trudeau considered invoking it for the first time since the replacement in the COVID situation.

[edit] Between that and the Notwithstanding Clause [1] there's a lot of latitude here.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_33_of_the_Canadian_Cha...

Just want to mention that notwithstanding clause doesn’t apply to mobility rights for what it’s worth. Section 1 of the charter also allows a lot of latitude.

There's already been a ruling on this https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/newfoundland-labrador/nl-trav...

The court used the section 1 of the charter in that case, not the notwithstanding clause. Also CCLA is appealing that case if I remember reading right.

I meant in response to your second part about sect. 1 applying.

Ah makes sense. My bad.

The emergencies act doesn't allow for using military in the event of a public welfare emergency, as you seem to implying. It doesn't even allow for the federal government to order the police around

> 9 (1) Nothing in a declaration of a public welfare emergency or in any order or regulation made pursuant thereto shall be construed or applied so as to derogate from, or to authorize the derogation from, the control or direction of the government of a province or a municipality over any police force over which it normally has control or direction.

https://laws-lois.justice.gc.ca/eng/acts/E-4.5/page-1.html#h...

[Provinces can request military help, but that's unrelated to either the emergencies act or the now repealed war measures act]

Wait, are those two Treudeaus relatives?

Yes.

Justin is Pierre's son.

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