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The Ontario courts have to date issued multiple court injunctions requesting that the law be enforced. But the Ontario Provincial Police have opted to ignore these injunctions.

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Once the first injunction isn’t enforced, that becomes the green light for activists to go ahead and cause whatever havoc they want, knowing they are now untouchable.

As I wrote in a recent column, back in 2013 Ontario Superior Court Justice David Brown issued a word of warning after similar injunctions weren’t enforced: “Such an approach by the OPP was most disappointing because it undercut the practical effect of the injunction order. That kind of passivity by the police leads me to doubt that a future exists in this province for the use of court injunctions in cases of public demonstrations.”

This is becoming a national crisis and it cries out for leadership. Yet leadership is nowhere to be found.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been out of the country for most of this mess. He didn’t seem to grasp the severity of the problem while opining on it from Germany.

“You need to know we have failed our Indigenous people over generations, over centuries. And there is no quick fix to it,” he said. “We also are, obviously, a country of laws. And making sure that those laws are enforced, even as there is, of course, freedom to demonstrate and to protest …. Getting that balance right and wrapping it up in the path forward … is really important.”

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What on earth does this mix of words mean? It is certainly not obvious right now that we are a country of laws. And while the PM is right that there is no quick fix to the broader questions around future First Nations prosperity, there is a quick fix to this current impasse: It’s to enforce the laws.