The Federal Court of Appeal has unanimously affirmed a lower court ruling that found Justin Trudeau's use of the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protest was an unconstitutional action.

The ruling ends a lengthy legal process that began in 2022 when protesters from across Canada descended on Ottawa to oppose vaccine mandates and lockdowns imposed on the public in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.

After a lengthy-but-peaceful demonstration in the nation's capital, Trudeau, then prime minister, used the country's most extreme legal measure as his government invoked the Emergencies Act to bring a violent, forceful end to the protest in February 2022.

This decision was ruled unconstitutional by Justice Richard Mosely in January 2024, who wrote that due to the “nature” and “broad powers” of the act, it should only be used as “a tool of last resort.”

The government, he said, “cannot invoke the Emergencies Act because it is convenient or because it may work better than other tools at their disposal or available to the provinces.”

The justice also said “threats to the security of Canada,” a significant requirement built into the act, were not met.

Rebel News previously reported how the Liberal government spent at least $2 million attempting to appeal Mosley's ruling.

“When consulted a few hours before the Act was invoked, most provinces expressed the view that provincial capacity and authority were not exceeded,” the Federal Court of Appeal ruling said, noting “the invocation of the Act would be divisive, unconstructive and unnecessary.”

Go Ad Free

Despite assertions from the government the Freedom Convoy posed a dire national security threat, “these concerns, as troubling as they might have been, were found in the preceding section of these reasons to be insufficient to ground a reasonable belief that a threat to national security existed at the time.”

The justices also weighed in on trade disruptions created by simultaneous demonstrations occurring in Alberta at the Coutts border crossing and in Ontario at the Ambassador Bridge in Niagara Falls.

“The trade-related impacts of the protests were not without repercussions for commerce,” the ruling noted, but suggested this did not create a risk to health and safety that necessitated using the Emergencies Act.

A key portion of the decision hinged on the right of peaceful protest laid out in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The appeal court agreed with the initial ruling that found the government's use of the Emergencies Act was “overbroad” as it swept up peaceful protesters alongside those committing more serious infractions.

“Although such individuals would not likely have been the focus of enforcement efforts by the police, they could nevertheless have been subject to enforcement actions,” the appeal decision said.

“This led the Federal Court to find that the right to freedom of expression of individual protesters who did not participate in the disruption of the peace was thus infringed,” the justices acknowledged.

Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley's decision was upheld unanimously by three Federal Court of Appeal justices.