Thought of the Day - December 8 2021 - Canada's States of Emergency

When I was updating the Blog's COVID timeline ( Thought of the Day - December 1 2021 - SARS-CoV-2 Timeline ) I stumbled across a table in Wikipedia with the dates of the COVID-related states of emergency first declared across Canada back in March 2020. I thought I would look into the subject a little further.

Canada invoked a response under the Emergencies Act as the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic was seen “seriously endangers lives, health or safety of Canadians and is of such proportions or nature as to exceed the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it”. Thus, the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act was passed by our Federal Government on March 25th, 2020. It is impressive how such a broad-reaching Act was drawn and passed up so quickly (but that is probably a subject for another posting).

Canada has only declared a state of emergency three times in the past:

• Ukrainian Canadian Internment, 1914-1920

• Internment of Japanese Canadians and Internment of Italian Canadians, 1940-1949

• October (FLQ) Crisis, 1970

Basically, all were enacted to limit civil liberties of select groups in times of conflict.

At the provincial level, states of emergency (SoE) are declared under General Emergencies Law (these can also be invoked in natural disasters, for example) while public health emergencies (PHE) are declared under the Public Health Law. The main difference is with an SoE, broad powers are handed to the premier or the governor-in-council, while with a PHE, broad powers are handed to the health minister or the chief medical officer.

Alberta, BC, NFLD, NWT, Nunavut, PEI, Quebec, Yukon all declared a Public Health Emergency.

Manitoba, NB, NS, Ontario & Saskatchewan declared a State of Emergency.

The two are not created equal. This may help explain, for example, why New Brunswick has had an easier time restricting travel by car into and around the province in comparison to BC ( Thought of the Day - April 20 2021 - BC Restrictions 2.0 ).

In the intervening eighteen months, some provinces ended their emergency orders just to subsequently reinvoke them.

At present, BC is the only province that is not under an emergency order. BC officials said, when the emergency order was lifted at the beginning of this summer, that certain orders and regulations made during the Public Heath Emergency would be extended to help with a gradual transition back to normal.

There were 39 COVID-related orders and regulations put in place in BC while under the PHE. 22 have been repealed and 17 remain in place. Quite a number of those still in effect pertain to administration, such as being able to use electronic attendance and signatures, and another significant group is related to Encampments (urban homeless tent cities), focused on their elimination. These aside, there are thirteen other areas still in effect. You can find the list here: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/covid-19/info/state-of-emergency-ends#schedule-2 and the associated Ministerial Orders (MOs) here: https://www.bclaws.gov.bc.ca/civix/content/mo/mo/?xsl=/templates/browse.xsl

I hope this helps provide you with a little insight into the COVID-response legislative activities at both the national and provincial levels. And maybe even inspire you to dig a little deeper to see what your government has enacted in specific areas of interest.

Cheers

Cliff