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Federal Court rules Trudeau violated Canadian charter during Freedom Convoy crackdown
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau broke the highest law in Canada, confecting an emergency to strip Canadians of their civil liberties during the Freedom Convoy, according to a sensational ruling by Canada’s Federal Court last week.
The long-awaited decision declared that measures invoked by the Trudeau government under the guise of the Emergencies Act were unconstitutional, unreasonable, beyond the scope of the Act, and violated the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
As reported by the National Post, “Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley found that though the Freedom Convoy protests in early 2022 were causing harm to Canada’s economy, trade and commerce, they did not rise to the level of a threat to national security as defined by the law.”
The ruling came in response to an application for judicial review brought by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, and a handful of other applicants.
Civil rights violations
In the early months of 2022, thousands of truckers from every province in Canada descended on the national capital of Ottawa in protest of vaccine mandates and other civil liberty violations by the ironically-named “Liberal” Trudeau government.
Rather than venturing out into the streets to listen to their concerns, Trudeau smeared the protesters as “people who wave swastikas” and, in an unhinged Twitter rant, accused them of “antisemitism, Islamophobia, anti-Black racism, homophobia, and transphobia”.
When that didn’t work, Trudeau doubled down on his pursuit of civil rights violations, invoking the Emergencies Act for the first time in Canadian history to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest protesters who had assembled peacefully to air their grievances.
For two years, a watching world has wondered whether the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms is worth the paper it’s written on. Now, happily, we have an answer to that question.
Specifically, the court found that under Trudeau, Canadians had been deprived of their Section 2 rights, which include “freedom of thought, belief, opinion and expression”. Additionally, Trudeau’s ham-fisted rule of the country violated Section 8 of the Charter, according to the court order, which guarantees Canadians the “right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure”.
Justice Mosley acknowledged that initially, he had sympathised with the Trudeau government’s crackdown, but that months of careful deliberation on the evidence caused him to change his mind.
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According to True North:
In his ruling Justice Richard Mosley emphasized that the Emergencies Act should be viewed as a last resort, deployed only when all other options have been exhausted. He found that the evidence indicated most provinces were capable of managing the situation using existing laws, such as the Criminal Code, as argued by Alberta.
Heads rolling
News of the ruling was greeted with elation in conservative circles especially, with one distinctly popular Trudeau troll account on X (formerly Twitter) finding the funny side:
The Federal Court of Canada has just ruled that my use of the Emergencies Act was illegal.
— Justin Trudeau's Ego (@Trudeaus_Ego) January 23, 2024
This decision is a threat to our democracy.
That's why I'm invoking the Emergencies Act to throw Judge Mosley in jail, freeze his bank accounts, and trample him with horses. pic.twitter.com/MKp8SbBGMP
The ruling has apparently claimed at least one scalp in the Trudeau regime, with David Lametti, the former Justice Minister and Attorney General of Canada, announcing his resignation from parliament just two days after the decision was handed down.
While remaining silent in his resignation letter on the leading role he played in the Freedom Convoy crackdown, Lametti faced public embarrassment last November when it was revealed he had sent private text messages joking about using tanks to clear protesters from downtown Ottawa.
The Counter Signal has noted that Lametti’s sudden exit “is not an isolated event”:
It follows the departure of Liberal MP Carolyn Bennett, who quit on the spot in December.
It also comes one day after Liberal MP Ken McDonald openly challenged Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s leadership and called for a party-wide vote to reassess their confidence in him. However on Thursday, McDonald walked back his statements.
On the day of the historic ruling, Trudeau deputy Chrystia Freeland announced the government’s disapproval of Justice Mosley’s ruling and vowed to appeal it.
Until then, many Canadians are enjoying the taste of a little more freedom in the air — and a lot less popularity for Trudeau in the polls ahead of next year’s election.
Kurt Mahlburg is a writer and author, and an emerging Australian voice on culture and the Christian faith. He has a passion for both the philosophical and the personal, drawing on his background as a graduate architect, a primary school teacher, a missionary, and a young adult pastor.
Image: Maksim Sokolov, Wikimedia Commons
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