Emergency Powers Debate

These are emergency powers assumed under a pandemic, settle down now.

Are there legal issues here? Can the federal government just "lock down" random local stuff in an emergency?

This a grave emergency and requires suspension of your Charter rights for… a few days

That is a pretty high bar for abuse you have there. Emergency acts are typically meant for governments to react quickly to unprecedented situations where not all eventualities can be forseen and covered by laws. This means that they are grant very broad powers that considered unacceptable under normal conditions and thus any use of those powers is potential abuse. What is abuse and what dis not allowed are two entirely different things.

Emergency powers should override that.

Is this another case where it could be overridden in case of "national emergency"? That seems to be how the administration does things nowadays.

Arguably yes. For example declaring a state of emergency does have knock-on if not immediate consequences.

You think the US government doesn't have the authority to call for a state of emergency and enact a general curfew?

To quote justice Robert H Jackson 'The constitution is not a suicide pact.' In sufficiently bad circumstances (wars, emergencies) governments will tend to enforce first and worry about legalities later.And in cases like this, where the emergency is biological rather than political in nature, pedantic legalism is going to lose to common sense and pragmatism.

Just because people say something is an emergency, doesn't mean it's constitutional to do anything about it.