Emergencies Act for Street Parties Ruled Unconstitutional
This is the second time in two months that Canada's Federal Court has ruled decisions by the Trudeau government to be "unreasonable and unconstitutional". At least they got those two.
It seems long overdue that the courts are actually using some common sense in their rulings, but there have been a few episodes of that lately. The latest victory for all freedom-loving inhabitants of the Great White North came just last week when our Federal Court ruled that yes, invoking the Emergencies Act to dispel what amounted to barely more than an extended street party was - wait for it - UNreasonable, UNjustified, and UNintelligent. Oh yeah, and UNconstitutional. I probably would have added unserious as well, since that seems to be the hallmark of this government. At any rate, those first three also seem to be accurate descriptors of our Prime Minister himself, but I’m guessing that wasn’t really the point. In case you missed it, this is the same Federal Court that ruled last November that the Trudeau government’s decision to ban single-use plastics on the basis of toxicity was unreasonable and unconstitutional as well. Could it be there’s a theme developing here? Really, it’s been in development for eight years now, it’s just taken this long for the courts to finally catch up.
Justice Richard G. Mosley wrote, “I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness — justification, transparency and intelligibility — and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration.”
Strangely, I and many others across this great country have been saying precisely that for almost two years now.
Even before Justice Paul Rouleau of The Public Order Emergency Commission declared that the Emergencies Act was completely justified, I had already written about said Commission. I followed it pretty closely at the time and so was well aware of the arguments being made on both sides. To my mind (and many other objective minds much more intelligent than mine) there was no doubt as to which way the ruling should have come down. And yet, the old family friend of the Trudeaus came down decidedly in favour of the Liberal government.
Interestingly, Paul Rouleau stated in his ruling that, "Reasonable and informed people could reach a different conclusion than the one I have arrived at." That’s one point on which we agree. There were in fact many reasonable and informed people who did reach a different conclusion in a fraction of the time that it took him, and now it looks like the reasonable people at the Federal Court have also reached a different conclusion than Paul Rouleau.
All through the pandemic, it was almost impossible to understand what the government’s (federal and provincial) thought process was, and why they were doing what they did. Listening to testimony from The Public Order Emergency Commission - especially that of OPP head of intelligence officer Pat Morris, it was really a no-brainer that the threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act hadn’t even been close to met.
I’ve been giving Justin Trudeau the benefit of the doubt for years on the basis of always assuming incompetence, rather than nefarious intent. Now, after eight years of that, I’m beginning to lean more towards the idea behind this quote from Carl Jung:
If you cannot understand why someone did something, look at the consequences—and infer the motivation.
This is becoming more and more reasonable as this government goes on because I have a hard time believing even Justin Trudeau is that incompetent.
So, all of this begs the big question: what does this decision by the Federal Court really mean?
Well, for starters, it means that the government will appeal the decision, and of course they have already stated they will. This is obviouslya great deal for the government, since they have nothing left to lose and you and I will be picking up the tab. That’s pretty much a sure thing. The thing we don’t know for sure at this point is how many hundreds of millions of dollars this deal is going to cost us. This appeal process will likely take well over a year to see the inside of a courtroom and by then, we’ll more than likely have a brand-new Conservative government that will simply drop the appeal and move on. One can hope anyway.
Another thing it may mean is that David Lametti, Canada’s former Minister of Justice and Attorney General (MOJAG) will delete his Twitter account and resign from office two days later. In case you’ve forgotten, Lametti was the guy who joked about sending in tanks to take care of the Freedom Convoy.
Yeah ok, it probably was actually a joke, and by the same token, I’m sure it was also just a coincidence he chose this precise moment to throw in the towel, but I digress…
When asked by Evan Solomon on CTV’s Power Play if normal people should be worried about having their bank accounts seized, this was Lametti’s response:
If you are a member of a pro-Trump movement who is donating hundreds of thousands of dollars, and millions of dollars to this kind of thing, then you ought to be worried.
“Pro-Trump” here would logically refer to a good portion of American Republicans, which in turn is a good portion of the population of the United States, so it’s going to be very difficult to ever put that statement on the right side of history. For the record, I never thought it was. Those who cheered that statement are probably feeling the need to double-down on that assessment because the alternative would to be to admit something they don’t want to admit. This is where the majority of the Liberal government is at. This piece isn’t supposed to be about David Lametti, I just figured he was due an honorable mention.
Deputy Prime Minister, Chrystia Freeland was quick to announce that the government would be appealing this decision and was careful to point out “how serious the situation was”, noting that “our national security, which includes our national economic security, was under threat.” The only problem is, Justice Mosley specifically disagreed that the Emergencies Act has anything to do with economic security but is specifically designed for “use of acts of serious violence against persons or property.” Good thing too. Can you imagine the Emergencies Act being whipped out every time a labour union organized a major strike in this country, since that is by definition economically impactful?
So again, Trudeau, Freeland, and their supporters may believe that words are violence, and bouncy castles are a threat to our national security, but thankfully Justice Mosley has dispelled that nonsense. For now.
By the way, as of the time of this writing, we have yet to hear so much as a peep from Justin Trudeau himself regarding this decision. Seems to me at around this time two years ago he was “isolating” at the cottage with a confirmed case of asymptomatic Covid-19 just as the Freedom Convoy was rolling into town.
Here’s yet another likely outcome of this decision: Those who agreed with the Rouleau Commission’s conclusion that the Emergencies Act was the perfect tool for the job of removing the Freedom Convoy (i.e. most of those in the Liberal and NDP parties) are simply going to double down on their ridiculous assertions because at this point it’s much too late to turn back. I’m sure they will ride this sinking ship right to the bottom along with Captain Trudeau. With any luck, they'll take Jagmeet Singh along for that ill-fated ride as well.
The biggest impact this decision is likely to make in the near term is a tidal wave of people like me saying I told you so! Once again, the ordinary, non-experts among us called it right off the bat, simply because it was obvious to anyone with a brain. The nice thing about the federal court siding with common sense is that the federal court actually has some teeth, unlike the Public Order Emergency Commission, which was really little more than a suggestion.
Words matter. This is a perfect example of how these kinds of people seek to control us by redefining words that already have an established definition. Just to reiterate, in case you’ve been on a desert island for the last 10 years:
Words are not violence,
Women do not have penises,
Ground disturbances are not mass graves, and
an Ottawa street party is not a national emergency.
It’s a little distressing to me that there are still people in this country who actually seek to argue any of these points. But this is precisely the reason that you don’t just accept at face value everything that comes down from on high as gospel truth. When you do that, and then have the temerity to argue about it with someone who has actually read more than one other account rather than just the latest offering from CBC, you run the very real risk of looking like an absolute idiot, and then having to double down on your original falsehood rather than admitting the obvious.
I look at this as yet another victory for those of us that were actually following the happenings on the ground and making an attempt to understand the context. Much of the time this required a fair bit of effort to cut through the bullshit, so kudos to the thousands of Canadians who cared enough to not only do the work, but also enough to get out there and take part in the real work which happened on the ground in Ottawa, and every other major city in the country.
As I mentioned, the government is going to appeal this, so it’s far from over, but the lawyers involved in this case seem to be fairly confident that the appeal will simply be another way for the government to spend our money without resulting
L in much of anything. Kind of like most of the other ways they’ve been spending our money over the past eight years. Best case scenario is that we’ll have an early election and Justin Trudeau will simply disappear and then we can all get on with trying to pay our bills, heat our homes, and other common sensical activities.
Did you even read the ruling?
I'd like to see the courts act much faster and keep things simple.
Court: Everyone, we're using the K.I.S.S. method in court today. Counsel, you each have thirty seconds for opening statements to make your case and show me which statute you're charging, then Prosecution you'll have two minutes per witness, Defense gets three. Maximum of three witnesses per side. This case will be tried and verdict rendered TODAY, understood?
When any judge gets overturned on appeal more than twice, he/she/xi is removed from the bench.
Keep the dockets clear so decisions (and justice) are timely and concise.