Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took the rare step of declaring a national public order emergency in a push to end protests that have paralyzed the center of the Canadian capital for more than two weeks and reverberated across the country.
The move, the first time a Canadian government has taken such action in half a century, is Mr. Trudeau’s most aggressive response since the crisis began. It would allow the federal government to expand measures to reopen impeded border crossings and clear the blockade of about 400 trucks in Ottawa, the nation’s capital, that has been overwhelming the police, snarling traffic, undermining the local economy and disturbing residents in the normally quiet city.
Mr. Trudeau said that the protests have been illegally obstructing neighborhoods and disturbing residents, while blockades harmed the economy. “This is not a peaceful protest,” he said.
“We will not allow illegal and dangerous activities to continue.” He said invoking the act was a “last resort” and stressed that he was not limiting the rights of peaceful assembly or freedom of expression.
“The time to go home is now,” he added.
The invocation of the Emergencies Act confers enormous temporary powers on the federal government, allowing it to do what is necessary, including overriding civil rights, to restore public order, for example, banning public assemblies or restricting travel to and from specific areas. But Mr. Trudeau stressed repeatedly that the act would not be used to suspend fundamental rights.
“We are not limiting people’s freedom of speech,” Mr. Trudeau said. “We are not limiting freedom of peaceful assembly. We are not preventing people from exercising their right to protest legally.”
While the prime minister and the cabinet can invoke the act whenever they see fit if the security of Canada is deemed under threat, the decision must then be approved by Parliament within a week.
The protests have multiplied across the country, including an almost weeklong blockade of a bridge vital to the supply chains of the global automobile industry. The response by the police and all levels of government to the crisis has been widely criticized as inadequate.
Mr. Trudeau, some critics contend, should have intervened earlier and perhaps even sent in the army.
The decision to invoke the law came as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police in Alberta said it had arrested 11 people and seized a large cache of weapons, including 13 long guns, handguns and a machete, linked to protests in Alberta. Police officials said in a statement that the people arrested were linked to a small group near a border crossing in Coutts, Alberta — which has been blockaded for days — and that the group was willing to use force against the police if any attempts were made to disrupt its blockade.
The political optics of invoking the act are fraught for Mr. Trudeau, given that the measure allows the government to breach constitutional rights in the name of restoring public order. Mr. Trudeau, a Liberal, has long fashioned himself as a champion of human rights.
Mr. Trudeau’s extraordinary response brings back memories of October 1970 and a tumultuous period known as the October Crisis when Prime Minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau — Justin Trudeau’s father — quashed a wave of terrorism by a violent Quebec separatist group by invoking the War Measures Act, and then sending in troops to Montreal. It was the only time in Canadian history that the war act was applied in peacetime. The Emergencies Act was introduced in July 1988 to replace the war act.
Mr. Trudeau said that he would not be using his authority under the declaration to deploy the military against the protesters, reiterating his previous position.
While Mr. Trudeau has expanded his means to defuse the crisis, the most economically damaging part of the demonstrations appeared to have subsided. After protesters blockaded a critical economic link between the United States and Canada for nearly a week, traffic began making its way over the span again early Monday, providing some relief to the Canadian authorities struggling to tame the protests and to industries disrupted by the unrest.
