OTTAWA — A judge's ruling that the federal Liberals were unjustified in using emergency law to quell a weeks-long protest in Ottawa has left the administrator of a downtown church feeling the court disregarded infringements of her rights.
In a decision released Tuesday, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley said the government's invocation of the Emergencies Act in February 2022 was unreasonable and led to violation of the constitutional right of free expression.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association, an applicant in the case, said the ruling serves notice that even in times of crisis, when emotions are running high, no government is above the law and that basic rights and freedoms must be upheld.
Vivian Leir, the long-time administrator of a Presbyterian church near Parliament Hill, said she was dismayed by the court decision after what she experienced during the three-week protest in downtown Ottawa.
The "Freedom Convoy" protest, initially seen as a demonstration against COVID-19 health restrictions, attracted people with a variety of grievances against Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and the Liberal government.
Blaring truck horns, diesel fumes and makeshift encampments prompted many businesses to temporarily close their doors and aggravated downtown residents, some of whom were harassed.
Disgruntled protesters also blockaded key border crossings to the United States.
The Emergencies Act allowed for temporary measures including regulation and prohibition of public assemblies, the designation of secure places, direction to banks to freeze assets and a ban on support for participants.
Leir said the court ruling has done nothing to change her belief that the government was justified in invoking the emergency powers.
"At the time, when the federal government brought in the Emergencies Act, it was a great relief to myself and I think many of the citizens of Ottawa," she said in an interview Wednesday.
"To hear that they didn't think it was justified when clearly nothing was being done about the situation, it kind of hurts."
Leir testified in the criminal trial of two "Freedom Convoy" organizers about how overwhelmed she felt by the number of big-rig trucks and near-constant horn honking that accompanied the protest. That criminal trial is still ongoing.
A proposed $290-million class-action lawsuit against convoy organizers on behalf of downtown Ottawa residents, workers and business owners is also still unfolding in Ontario court, said Paul Champ, lawyer for the lead plaintiff in the case.
Reflecting on Mosley's ruling, Champ said Wednesday that invoking the Emergencies Act is something that should be reserved for extraordinary circumstances, involving dire threats to the security of Canada, "and I don't think that we were necessarily there."
"The court definitely found that there was an unacceptable breakdown in public order in Ottawa, but felt that the Emergencies Act, or at least the way it was invoked, was a blunt tool to try to address it," Champ said.
"The big takeaway is that it's an extremely high threshold."
The federal government has said it disagrees with Mosley's decision and plans to appeal, meaning the case is likely to be before the courts for many more months or even years.
The Public Order Emergency Commission, which carried out a mandatory review after invocation of the emergency law, issued 56 recommendations last February on improving the response to large-scale public order events.
Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc is expected to provide the government's full response to Rouleau's findings next month.
The Emergencies Act also calls for a joint committee of parliamentarians to review the government's measures and report back to the House of Commons and the Senate.
That committee was struck in March 2022 and has met more than two dozen times, but has yet to file a substantial report.
The committee is waiting for documents and evidence to be translated into both official languages before the material can be considered.
The parliamentarians are expected to meet when the House resumes to question a Privy Council Office representative about the issue.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 24, 2024.
Keep reading
I'm also disappointed in
I'm also disappointed in Chief Justice Mosley's decision. I'm not an expert on law and the Charter, but the siege of Ottawa, our nation's capital, lasted far too long. It was so disrespectful of local residents. It may have been a "police matter" but the Ottawa police were totally ineffective and often sympathetic to protesters. As many have pointed out, if it had been an environmental or Indigenous protest, it would have been shut down immediately. Something had to be done to stop the protest which had gotten totally out of control. Even though our Charter gives us the right to "peaceful assembly," I believe there are limits to those rights when they infringe on the rights of others. Morever, it was the intention of the organizers (Tamara Lich et al) to take down the federal government (asking the Governor General to dissolve Parliament), as evidenced in their Memorandum of Understanding, which was online and later taken down.
You'd think that with all the
You'd think that with all the civil liberties actually being trampled upon, that group wouldn't reduce itself to looking for causes. If I'm not mistaken, it's the same group that were planning on challenging the constitutionality of the "new" law allowing, basically, quarantine measures. I don't mind sharing that it took minimal research to discover that both the US and Canada had Quarantine Acts in place way back near the end of the 19th century / beginning of the 20th, and shared with them some basic information about the "1918 'flu" and what was told to me about it by my grandparents. I lost relatives on both sides of my family tree. Many of the measures that worked for that 'flu were also useful in Covid.
But I also have somewhere a photo of an individual, apparently the girlfriend of one of my relatives, sitting on her front steps in front of a Quarantine Notice on the front door. That was for, if memory serves, a scarlet fever or diptheria epidemic. Back before antibiotics, exposure to either of those was pretty much a death sentence for babies and young children. If memory serves, I lost at least one first cousin to the former -- a cousin I never got to meet, obviously. (I'm old, but not *that* old!)
As far as protest goes, the Convoy was way beyond a protest: it was an occupation. And it stopped delivery of goods at at least two border points, and I believe it was at Coutts, AB, there were some serious arms and munitions involved as well.
So I confess I have no idea what the judge was thinking. Can't quite think of a quip that joins the phrases "blunt instrument" and "horse's arse" ...
Were I to be able to speak with him, I'd probably ask him what he thought might have been a suitably sharp instrument to get them to move on, and re-open the borders. A pointy stick, perhaps?
They tried a repeat performance in Toronto, but had to follow rules that were quite different from what they were allowed to do in Ottawa, most likely because the security planning for the provincial capital was better planned than that for the federal capital.
Woops! Hit the post button
Woops! Hit the post button too soon!
Toronto had the great benefit of vicarious hindsight.
The more I think about it,
The more I think about it, this ruling may be a positive for progressives. Conservatives, of course, are crowing about the Liberals' defeat in court. In doing so, they remind the whole country that they were the party that supported the convoy, handing out doughnuts, etc. Maybe this will give pause to some voters who may foolishly be thinking of supporting the Conservatives in the next election. Very few Canadians supported that disgraceful display of selfish and misinformed treachery, and those same Canadians supported use of the EA.
Comments