The word “unprecedented” applies to some aspects of the massive public inquiry underway in Ottawa.
After all, the commission is investigating the first-time use of the federal Emergencies Act during the “Freedom Convoy,” protests last winter that decried extraordinary restrictions during a global pandemic.
But this week’s dramatic conclusion of the Public Order Emergency Commission hearings won’t mark the first time a Canadian prime minister has taken the stand in a commission of inquiry.
The country’s first prime minister, Sir John A. Macdonald, testified at a royal commission on the Canadian Pacific Railway in 1873. The first question was phrased as such: “Will you have the goodness to state to the commission all the facts within your knowledge related to this matter?” And the answer began: “I suppose it had better be done as a narrative?”…