Canadian military exercise sparks unfounded theories of forced removal

At the end of April, counties in Bruce and Huron counties – about 190 kilometers northeast of Toronto – announced the area would be scene of a military training exercise called Trillium Risk (filed here, here It is here).

According to According to press releases, Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) soldiers planned to conduct welfare checks “to simulate what would happen if they were asked to check on the welfare of residents during a real emergency” (archived here).

The oneadverts requested online consternationwith a social media user circulating an open letter warning that wellness exams could violate residents’ privacy. Others posted videos of soldiers walking through residential streets, which appear in the People’s Voice clip.

But Trillium Enterprise was not intended to round citizens. The Canadian Department of National Defense said the May 3-5 exercise trained soldiers in responding to natural disasters.

“Wellness checks during this training do not involve the gathering of information and soldiers do not ask any private health questions,” spokeswoman Andrée-Anne Poulin said in a May 14 email.

“This is completely voluntary and is another opportunity for residents to meet the troopers and for us to provide the information the county wants them to have.”

Poulin said Trillium Venture engaged in a domestic response to natural disasters that would be the responsibility of CAF if provincial or territorial authorities asked for help (filed here).

While the CAF prepares for many different crisis scenarios, including floods and ice storms, she said this exercise simulates the response to an extreme heat wave in anticipation of potential forest fires this summer. Because it was a domestic training exercise, Poulin said the soldiers did not carry weapons.

Right to refuse

Brian Hurleypartner of Freedom Law in Edmonton, Alberta (archived here), said on May 21 that when the military or police knock on someone’s door, the resident has the right to refuse to speak to them unless they have a warrant.

“With the military and the police, you have the same rights as with the vacuum cleaner salesman,” he said. he said. “You can’t answer the door, you can open the door and say, ‘Thank you very much, please come out.'”

He said certain emergency evacuation orders could give different governments authority to remove by force people from their homes, but this is generally not the case (filed here) – and that normally the military would also not receive this power during an exercise like Trillium Risk.

Hurley added that the last time Canadians were arrested for military was during the internment in residents, mainly of Japanese descent, during World War II (archived here). He said such actions would normally require the declaration of emergency measures, which are no The power Federal or provincially in Ontario (archived here It is here).

The Canadian government invoked the Emergencies Law and its predecessor, the War Measures Act (filed here It is here), four times: World War I and II, the October 1970 crisis and the 2022 crisis Ottawa Truckers Convoy (filed here). A federal judge in January ruled the last instance was an exaggeration.

Canada is also reckoning with the legacy of residential schoolswhich involved the forced removal of indigenous children from their families (archived here).

Read more AFP reports on disinformation in Canada here.