Turns out bouncy castles aren’t a national emergency after all

Pictured: Not a national emergency

For those whose bank accounts the government froze, those who remain on trial for trumped up charges, and those who were pepper sprayed, tear gassed, or zip tied while protesting for freedom, this week’s news might be too little to late.

Even so, the aforementioned people have all been vindicated.

The Federal Court ruled Tuesday that Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act – both the decision to apply it and the measures he used it to impose – were illegal.

In other words, there was no “national emergency” rising to the wartime levels intended by the act. And even if there had been, the government unjustifiably violated Canadians’ constitutional rights.

The decision was handed down, coincidentally, on the two year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy’s launch from Delta, B.C.

When Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act, he assured Canadians that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms would be respected. His evidence was thin: the guarantee that Charter rights would be protected was seemingly predicated only on the fact that the law says Charter rights must be protected. I’d call it circular logic but even “logic” seems a bit of a stretch.

As I remarked then, if you have to pinky swear to Canadians that you’re upholding their rights, you aren’t. A well-respected judge on the Federal Court now agrees.

While the Freedom Convoy was an unprecedented demonstration (globally, not just by Canadian standards), Trudeau’s response put Canada on the map in all the wrong ways. It was condemned the world over, even by the Chinese Communist Party and Iran’s former president. Not that I put too much stock in what they think, but when you go too far for even the dictators, you should probably reassess.

The crackdown illuminated the authoritarian impulse in Canada’s “sunny ways” government. The convoy was a response to Covid restrictions, but also an increasingly divisive and vindictive approach to politics by Trudeau that vilified people based on their vaccine status and ultimately their political views.

Unfortunately for Trudeau, his denigration of convoy supporters as a “fringe minority” with “unacceptable views” ended up being taken up as a badge of honour and reclaimed by the very fringe he tried so hard to marginalize.

The court ruling is not a full exoneration of the Freedom Convoy. It’s still possible that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber could be found guilty on their mischief charges. It’s also possible that convoy organizers could lose the lawsuit filed on behalf of Ottawa residents. The decision isn’t a declaration that the convoy was a purely lawful protest, but it does say there was no “threat to the security of Canada” as per the CSIS Act, which Trudeau has spent nearly two years pretending there was.

Most Canadians didn’t need a court ruling to know that dance parties, inflatable hot tubs, and bouncy castles did not create a national emergency – but Trudeau did.

That said, he’s clearly not learned his lesson. Before the ink on the decision was even try, Trudeau’s deputy, Chrystia Freeland, expressed her unrepentance and vowed to appeal.

The story is far from over. The case will almost certainly go to the Federal Court of Appeal and likely beyond that to the Supreme Court of Canada. But the decision from Justice Richard Mosley, who was appointed under Jean Chretien’s Liberal government, will be difficult for Trudeau’s lawyers to dismantle.

One interesting tidbit from Mosley’s 190-page decision was his admission that he was initially leaning towards finding the Emergencies Act’s invocation to be reasonable at the outset of the case.

“I considered the events that occurred in Ottawa and other locations in January and February 2022 went beyond legitimate protest and reflected an unacceptable breakdown of public order," he wrote.

"I had and continue to have considerable sympathy for those in government who were confronted with this situation. Had I been at their tables at that time, I may have agreed that it was necessary to invoke the Act. And I acknowledge that in conducting judicial review of that decision, I am revisiting that time with the benefit of hindsight and a more extensive record of the facts and law than that which was before the (government).”

I share that because it underscores the lost nuance of the Emergencies Act debate, which is that one needn’t support the Freedom Convoy protests to find the heavy-handed, Orwellian crackdown on civil liberties to be justified. Far too many people defended the measures solely out of contempt for those standing up against vaccine mandates and Covid restrictions, without thinking of the longer-term implications of allowing such a response to a peaceful, albeit disruptive, protest.

Trudeau and Freeland said anyone who provided even nominal support to the Freedom Convoy was fair game to have their bank accounts frozen without charge or conviction. They viewed their political opponents as lawbreakers. But now it is a matter of fact that they were the ones breaking the law.

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