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Canada's Trudeau defends use of emergency powers

STORY: The "Freedom Convoy" demonstrations against public health measures including vaccine mandates paralyzed Ottawa and blocked some border crossings for weeks in January and February.

A commission looking into the government's use of the powers has heard from witnesses into justifications for its use and events leading up to it.

"I am absolutely, absolutely serene and confident that I made the right choice in agreeing with the invocation," Trudeau told the commission.

He cited the threat of serious violence and local police not having a credible plan to restore order as reasons that prompted him to invoke the act, which has not been used in its current form since it was created in the 1980s.