Liberals determined to reject rule of law after Emergencies Act ruling: Aaron Wudrick

From the MacDonald Laurier Institute

The government comforts itself in the fiction that the rules don’t apply to it

On Tuesday, The Federal Court of Canada released a decision that all Canadians should celebrate as an important victory for the rule of law in Canada.

In an application brought by two public interest law associations — the Canadian Constitution Foundation and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association — the court considered two questions. Whether the Trudeau government acted outside the law in invoking the Emergencies Act in February 2022 to put an end to the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa, and whether orders issued under the authority of the act violated the Charter. On both counts, the court answered unambiguously: yes, they did.

Perhaps the most striking thing about the court decision authored by Justice Richard Mosley is how straightforward much of the reasoning is. There is no tortured logic, no obscure line of argument, no abstract reasoning; the principles at stake are easily digestible by lawyers and non-lawyers alike. Justice Mosley does exactly what most Canadians probably expect courts to do: consider evidence; read what the law says; and draw conclusions that, for lack of a better phrase, reflect common sense.

Take for example the government’s insistence that the Freedom Convoy constituted a “threat to the security of Canada” — a phrase which is explicitly defined in the Emergencies Act as having the same meaning as it does in Section 2 of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Act. Unfortunately for the government, CSIS’s official determination was that the convoy did not constitute a threat to the security of Canada. This being a very inconvenient obstacle for a government that wanted to invoke the act, Cabinet simply came up with a new strategy: ignore the statutory requirement that the Section 2 CSIS Act definition be met, come up with an alternative definition that better fits their argument, and make the opposite finding! QED.

Understandably, Justice Mosley had none of this. The law says what the law says. Perhaps, as has been argued elsewhere, using the CSIS Act definition of “threat to the security of Canada” is a poor fit for the Emergencies Act. If so, Parliament is well within its rights to amend it. But it’s not what the law said in February 2022, and Cabinet cannot simply wave away the words because it happens to be inconvenient for their best-laid plans.

On issue after issue — the scope of the security threat; the claim that enforcement tools under existing laws being exhausted; the reasonableness of sweeping violations of Charter rights of free expression and against unreasonable search and seizure — Justice Mosley, after looking at all the evidence, disagreed with the government’s assertions. The government’s claims simply did not survive contact with a fulsome evidentiary record.

Nor was the ruling only damning to the government’s flimsy arguments. It was also an implicit rebuke to Justice Paul Rouleau, the head of the Public Order Emergency Commission, who made the unnecessary and ill-advised choice in his final report to muse about the legality of the act’s invocation, in spite of the fact that — by his own admission — it was not part of his mandate to do so, and he had not undertaken a formal analysis.

Perhaps most interesting of all was Justice Mosley’s candid admission towards the end of his decision that he had initially “been leaning to the view that the decision to invoke the (Emergencies Act) was reasonable” and acknowledged that it was only after taking the time to “carefully deliberate about the evidence and submissions” and the applicants’ “informed legal argument” did he conclude — unambiguously — that the government had acted outside the law.

And what of the political fallout? There is a world in which a government might, when confronted with a court ruling that they illegally invoked and abused the most draconian law on the books, simply accept the ruling with humility, apologize unreservedly for having overstepped, and resign on principle.

Clearly, we don’t live in that world: unrepentant as ever, and within an hour of the decision’s release, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland announced that the government would be appealing it. This is completely in character for a government that has time and again sneered at the rule of law — e.g. their ethics violations both big and small, the SNC-Lavalin scandal — preferring to comfort itself with fiction that rules are for other people.

Canadians know better. Governments are obliged to follow the law, just like everyone else — and we owe Justice Mosley a debt of gratitude for the timely reminder of that fact.

Aaron Wudrick is a lawyer and the domestic policy director at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute.

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COVID-19

Major new studies link COVID shots to kidney disease, respiratory problems

Published on November 13, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Receiving four or more COVID shots was associated with 559% higher likelihood of cold in children, a new study found, and another one linked the shots to higher risk of renal dysfunction.

Two major new studies have been published sounding the alarm about the COVID-19 shots potentially carrying risks of not only respiratory diseases but even kidney injury.

The Washington Stand first drew attention to the studies, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases (IJID) and International Journal of Medical Science (IJMS), respectively.

The first examined insurance claims and vaccination records for the entire population of South Korea, filtering out cases of infection prior to the start of the outbreak for a pool of more than 39 million people. It reported that the COVID shots correlated with mixed impacts on other respiratory conditions. A “temporary decline followed by a resurgence of URI [upper respiratory infections] and common cold was observed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic,” it concluded. “In the Post-pandemic period (January 2023–September 2024), the risk of URI and common cold increased with higher COVID-19 vaccine doses,” it noted.

Children in particular, who are known to face the lowest risk from COVID itself, had dramatically higher odds of adverse events the more shots they took. Receiving four or more was associated with 559% higher likelihood of cold, 91% higher likelihood of pneumonia, 83% higher likelihood of URI, and 35% higher likelihood of tuberculosis.

The second study examined records of 2.9 million American adults, half of whom received at least one COVID shot and half of whom did not.

“COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a higher risk of subsequent renal dysfunction, including AKI [acute kidney injury] and dialysis treatment,” it found, citing 15,809 cases versus 11,081. “The cumulative incidence of renal dysfunction was significantly higher in vaccinated than in unvaccinated patients […] At the one-year follow-up, the number of deaths among vaccinated individuals was 7,693, while the number of deaths among unvaccinated individuals was 7,364.” Notably, the study did not find a difference in the “type of COVID-19 vaccine administered.”

The researchers note that this is not simply a matter of correlation, but that a causal mechanism for such results has already been indicated.

“Prior studies have indicated that COVID-19 vaccines can damage several tissues,” they explain.

“The main pathophysiological mechanism of COVID-19 vaccine-related complications involve vascular disruption. COVID-19 vaccination can induce inflammation through interleukins and the nod-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3, an inflammatory biomarker. In another study, thrombosis episodes were observed in patients who received different COVID-19 vaccines. Additionally, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with the development of myocarditis and related complications […] The development of renal dysfunction can be affected by several biochemical factors [26]. In turn, AKI can increase systemic inflammation and impair the vasculature and red blood cell aggregation. Given that the mechanism underlying COVID-19 vaccine-related complications corresponds to the pathophysiology of kidney disease, we hypothesized that COVID-19 vaccination may cause renal dysfunction, which was supported by the results of this study.”

Launched in the final year of President Donald Trump’s first term in response to COVID-19, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) had the COVID shots ready for use in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested. As LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a body of evidence steadily accumulated over the following years that they failed to prevent transmission and, more importantly, carried severe risks of their own. COVID was a sticking point for many in Trump’s base, yet he doggedly refused to disavow OWS.

So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current vaccines optional but not supporting work to develop successors.

In early August, Kennedy announced the government would be “winding down” almost $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine projects and rejecting future exploration of the technology in favor of more conventional vaccines. Last week, HHS revoked emergency use authorizations (EUA) for the COVID shots, which were used to justify the long-since-rescinded mandates and sidestep other procedural hurdles, and in its place issued “marketing authorization” for those who meet a minimum risk threshold for the following mRNA vaccines: Moderna (6+ months), Pfizer (5+), and Novavax (12+).

“These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors,” Kennedy said, making good on his pledge to “end COVID vaccine mandates, keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable, demand placebo-controlled trials from companies,” and “end the emergency.”

COVID-19

Spy Agencies Cozied Up To Wuhan Virologist Before Lying About Pandemic

Published on November 11, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

A close collaborator of virologists who studied coronaviruses in Wuhan frequently advised America’s top spy agency in the lead-up to the pandemic, and that same agency suppressed intelligence on the parallels between COVID-19 and their research.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) hub for foreign biological threats dismissed the intelligence pointing to a lab accident in Wuhan as “misinformation” in January 2021, two former government sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive internal meetings told the Daily Caller News Foundation. New documents show that intelligence risked implicating ODNI’s own bioengineering advisor — University of North Carolina professor Ralph Baric.

Baric, who engineered novel coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), advised ODNI four times a year on biological threats, according to documents released Oct. 30 by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

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Baric did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The professor’s ties to American intelligence may run even deeper, the documents reveal, as ODNI facilitated a meeting between the CIA and Baric about a project on coronaviruses in September 2015.

The email exchange with the subject line “Request for Your Expertise” shows an unnamed government official with a CIA-affiliated email address pitching a “possible project” to Baric relating to “[c]oronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation.”

The new documents shed a bit of light on a question members of Congress have posed for years: Whether our own intelligence agencies knew more about the likelihood of a lab origin of COVID than they told the public.

“Director Ratcliffe has been on the forefront of this issue since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and has been committed to transparency and accountability on this issue,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement. “In January – as one of the Director’s first actions at Langley – CIA made public its assessment that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin. CIA will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting as appropriate.”

Paul is seeking more documents from ODNI on potential ties between U.S. intelligence and the research in Wuhan as part of an ongoing investigation by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and has promised public hearings in the coming months.

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard disbanded the ODNI biological threats office earlier this year following questions from the DCNF about its suppression of COVID origins intelligence in August. Gabbard and a dedicated working group have also been quietly investigating the origins of COVID.

Protecting Their Own

Baric gave a presentation to the ODNI in January 2020 showing that he advised American intelligence that COVID may have emerged from a lab, the documents also indicate. Baric shared that the WIV had sequenced thousands of SARS-like coronaviruses, including strains capable of epidemics, the slides show.

Baric noted that the Wuhan lab does this work under low biosafety levels despite the ability of some of these viruses to infect and grow in human lung cells.

What Baric omitted: He had submitted a grant application in 2018 with intentions to conduct research to make coronaviruses with the same rare features seen in COVID while concealing the Wuhan lab’s low biosafety level, jotting in the margins of a draft of the grant application that Americans would “freak out” if they knew about the shoddy standards.

One year after Baric’s presentation, ODNI had hardened against the lab leak hypothesis.

When State Department officials pushed to declassify certain intelligence related to a plausible lab leak in January 2021, the ODNI expressed concerns that it would “call out actions that we ourselves are doing.”

Former ODNI National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center (NCBC) Director Kathryn Brinsfield, a medical doctor, also dismissed a January 2021 presentation by government officials about a plausible lab origin of COVID as “misinformation,” two sources told the DCNF. Her top aide Zach Bernstein, who possesses a master’s degree in security studies but no scientific credentials, also dismissed the presentation, according to three sources.

Gabbard disbanded NCBC in August following questions from the DCNF about its role in suppressing COVID origins intelligence.

But in the years preceding Gabbard’s takeover of the intelligence community’s central office, the ODNI’s public reports omitted any analysis of COVID’s viral genome. One intelligence agency filed a formal complaint about this glaring omission, the DCNF reported.

Scientists often received fierce pushback from former National Intelligence Council official Adrienne Keen, who helped steward former President Joe Biden’s 90-day review into COVID’s origins, an official told the DCNF. Paul’s request for records from ODNI includes a request for some of Keen’s communications.

Brinsfield and Keen did not respond to requests for comment.

Unanswered Questions

Despite the new disclosures, the precise nature of the CIA’s interest in Baric’s coronavirus work remains unknown. The documents do not include any further details about the work that the CIA and Baric may or may not have undertaken.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the discovery of novel coronaviruses and shipped the samples to Wuhan through a 2009-2020 program called PREDICT, the DCNF reported in July. USAID sometimes acted as a CIA front before Trump dismantled it earlier this year — but no evidence exists that the CIA directed PREDICT.

An unnamed FBI special agent was in communication with Baric about responding to public requests for his research and emails with the Wuhan lab through the North Carolina Freedom of Information Act, according to a 2024 congressional letter, but details about the contact between the FBI and Baric also remain uncertain.

The CIA was slow to acknowledge that a lab was the pandemic’s most likely source, an assessment that the CIA made public more than five years after the pandemic emerged and well after the FBI and the Department of Energy.

In early 2020, when Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger tasked CIA analysts to dig into the matter, they came up empty, according to a New York Times report. Instead, anonymous sources smeared Pottinger as having a “conspiratorial view” of the Chinese Communist Party.

Trump’s current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who served as the DNI from May 2020 to January 2021, revealed in a 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had pushed for the declassification of COVID origins intelligence as the DNI but that he “faced constant opposition, particularly from Langley.”