ONTARIO-The Federal Court of Appeal has ruled in favour of the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA)’s arguments in the Emergencies Act case.
The three judges on the panel stated ” As disturbing and disruptive the blockades and the convoy protests in Ottawa could be, they fell well short of a threat to national security.”
“There was no evidence that the lives, health or safety of the people living in Ottawa were endangered (as annoying, stressful and concerning as the protests were),” continued the statement.
The Emergencies Act allows the federal government to enact wide-reaching orders without going through the ordinary democratic process—but only once stringent legal thresholds are met. The Federal Court of Appeal confirmed today that the federal government did not meet these thresholds when it invoked the Emergencies Act in February 2022.
“While the extraordinary powers granted to the federal government through the Emergencies Act are necessary in extreme circumstances, they also threaten the rule of law and our democracy,” said Howard Sapers, CCLA’s Executive Director. “The courts are responsible for ensuring that the government does not invoke these powers arbitrarily, and CCLA’s mandate is to raise these important issues for judicial scrutiny.”
CCLA’s judicial review challenging the federal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was not an endorsement of the “Freedom Convoy” protests according to officials.
However, the CCLA maintained there was no “public order emergency” as contemplated under the Act, and certainly not one that extended across the entirety of Canada. Existing laws could have—and should have—been used to address the situation, rather than the Emergencies Act according to the CCLA.
The Federal Court of Appeal agreed, holding that the legal thresholds built into the Emergencies Act were designed to ensure that only sufficiently serious considerations—and certainly not the ones that the federal government had identified—could prevail over democratic values and fundamental freedoms.
“Legal thresholds do not bend, much less break, in exigent circumstances,” said Anaïs Bussières McNicoll, Director of the Fundamental Freedoms program at the CCLA. “Today’s historic judgment puts this and future governments on notice: even in times of crisis, no government is above the law.”
CCLA says it is immensely grateful for the outstanding pro bono legal services of Ewa Krajewska, Brandon Anand Chung and Erik Arsenault of Henein Hutchison Robitaille LLP in this case.
