COVID-19
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.
From LifeSiteNews
Protestor Evan Blackman’s legal team argues Trudeau’s Emergencies Act-based bank account freezes were punitive state action tied directly to protest participation.
A Freedom Convoy protester whose bank accounts were frozen by the Canadian government says a judge erred after his ruling did not consider the fact that the funds were frozen under the Emergencies Act, as grounds for a stay of proceedings.
In a press release sent out earlier this week, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) said that Freedom Convoy protestor Evan Blackman will challenge a court ruling in his criminal case via an appeal with the Ontario Superior Court of Justice.
“This case raises serious questions about how peaceful protest is treated in Canada and about the lasting consequences of the federal government’s unlawful use of the Emergencies Act,” noted constitutional lawyer Chris Fleury. “The freezing of protestors’ bank accounts was part of a coordinated effort to suppress dissent, and courts ought to be willing to scrutinize that conduct.”
Blackman was arrested on February 18, 2022, during the police crackdown on Freedom Convoy protests against COVID restrictions, which was authorized by the Emergencies Act (EA). The EA was put in place by former Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government, which claimed the protests were violent, despite no evidence that this was the case.
Blackman’s three bank accounts with TD Bank were frozen due to his participation in the Freedom Convoy, following a directive ordered by Trudeau.
As reported by LifeSiteNews, in November of this year, Blackman was convicted at his retrial even though he had been acquitted at his original trial. In 2023, Blackman’s “mischief” and “obstructing police” charges were dismissed by a judge due to lack of evidence and the “poor memory of a cop regarding key details of the alleged criminal offences.”
His retrial resulted in Blackman getting a conditional discharge along with 12 months’ probation and 122 hours of community service, along with a $200 victim fine surcharge.
After this, Blackman’s application for a stay of proceedings was dismissed by the court. He had hoped to have his stay of proceedings, under section 24(1) of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, allowed. However, the judge ruled that the freezing of his bank accounts was legally not related to his arrest, and because of this, the stay of proceedings lacked standing.
The JCCF disagreed with this ruling, noting, it “stands in contrast to a Federal Court decision finding that the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was unreasonable and violated Canadians’ Charter rights, including those targeted by the financial measures used against Freedom Convoy protestors.”
As of press time, a hearing date has not been scheduled.
In 2024, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau was “not justified” in invoking the Emergencies Act.
In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Trudeau’s federal government enacted the EA in mid-February.
After the protesters were cleared out, which was achieved through the freezing of bank accounts of those involved without a court order as well as the physical removal and arrest of demonstrators, Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23, 2022.
From the Daily Caller News Foundation
By Emily Kopp
The letter, exclusively shared with the Daily Caller News Foundation, seeks more details about those deaths and the passive U.S. vaccine safety surveillance system and complacent Food and Drug Administration (FDA) bureaucracy under the Biden administration that delayed their reporting for years.
“Nobody wanted to admit that these things were causing death. This is absolutely a case of willful ignorance,” Johnson said in an interview with the DCNF.
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The letter requests from the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) “all records referring or relating to the review of the 96 reports of death following a COVID-19 vaccine … including but not limited to, any memorandum or report created following that review and the data underlying the reports.”
“I am grateful that we now have individuals at our federal health agencies who care about vaccine safety and efficacy. I am, however, disappointed that despite having subpoenaed HHS for the type of data and information described in Dr. Prasad’s memo, it does not appear to have been provided to my office,” the letter reads.
HHS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“This is a profound revelation. For the first time, the US FDA will acknowledge that COVID-19 vaccines have killed American children. Healthy young children who faced tremendously low risk of death were coerced, at the behest of the Biden administration, via school and work mandates, to receive a vaccine that could result in death. In many cases, such mandates were harmful. It is difficult to read cases where kids aged 7 to 16 may be dead as a result of covid vaccines,” Prasad wrote. “There is no doubt that without this FDA commissioner [Marty Makary], we would not have performed this investigation and identified this safety concern. This fact also demands serious introspection and reform.”
“One reason I’m writing this letter is that this memo needs much greater attention. This should be a blockbuster,” the Wisconsin senator told the DCNF.
Johnson, who has investigated the issue of COVID vaccine-linked adverse events since June 2021, also seeks more clarity about why FDA only examined a fraction of total reports to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System (VAERS). He noted that the 96 deaths scrutinized by FDA staff in its investigation represents a sliver of the raw VAERS reports of 9,299 deaths worldwide within two days of vaccination.
Distinguishing which VAERS reports indicate genuine fatal side effects and which represent mere coincidences requires autopsy reports, which regulators and physicians often do not request because of a ideological reluctance to acknowledge that vaccines can carry risks, Johnson told the DCNF. Johnson said he has spoken to families who suspected a vaccine injury but struggled to obtain autopsies.
“With some of these officials at federal health agencies and within the medical establishment, vaccines are religion. The do not want to muddy the water with facts,” he said.
Johnson’s letter notes that Prasad acknowledged a culture at FDA “where vaccines are exculpated rather than indicted in cases of ambiguity,” and that the true number of deaths is likely higher.
Johnson has as chair of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations investigated the Biden administration’s headlong expansion of COVID vaccines and booster shots to healthy young adults and children.
His committee uncovered internal federal documents showing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention never updated its vaccine surveillance tool “V-Safe” to include cardiac symptoms, despite naming myocarditis as a potential adverse event by October 2020, per a May report. The investigation also found that top officials at FDA obstructed a warning to pediatricians and other providers about the risk of myocarditis after the May 2021 authorization of the Pfizer vaccine for 12 to 15-year-olds, months after Israeli health officials first detected the safety signal in February 2021.
Johnson’s letter highlights missing safety studies that the drugmakers never conducted.
Under the Biden administration, the FDA waived the responsibility of the drugmakers to conduct post-market studies that they had pledged to regulators, scientific advisors on the FDA Vaccines and Related Products Advisory Committee, and the public that they would complete. These uncompleted studies include promised research into subclinical myocarditis, undocumented rates of heart inflammation without obvious symptoms, Prasad’s memo states.
Johnson’s letter reveals the committee has not received any records from HHS about the liability shield for COVID-19 vaccines.
A public health media personality reported on Dec. 11 that FDA staff had downgraded the certainty with which it can attribute some the deaths to the vaccine in the weeks since Prasad received their top line results — echoing prior leaks from career officials aimed at undermining FDA’s new bosses.
Center for Drug Evaluation and Research Acting Director Tracy Beth Hoeg first concluded in a separate analysis that there were in fact deaths in children in the summer, but career staff leaked the results to reporters who “portrayed the incident as Dr. Hoeg attempting to create a false fear regarding vaccines” soon after, per Prasad’s memo.
Johnson’s letter seeks documentation of Hoeg’s meeting, including “a list of all attendees.”
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