Invocation of Emergencies Act Unreasonable & Unconstitutional
A case brought forth by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, Canadian Constitution Foundation (et al.), related to the blantant overrreach of the government in invoking the Emergencies Act in February 2022 (and presided over by The Honourable Mr. Justice Mosley), has concluded what most Canadian already knew:
Invocation of the Emergencies Act was
UNREASONABLE and UNCONSTITUTIONAL
In Justice Mosley’s decision (a full PDF of which you can download here), he stated the following:
“In brief, I find that the reasons provided for the decision to declare a public order emergency do not satisfy the requirements of the Emergencies Act and that certain of the temporary measures adopted to deal with the protests infringed provisions of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms – Part I of the Constitution Act, 1982 adopted as Schedule B to the Canada Act 1982, 1982, c. 11 (U.K.) [Charter] and were not justified under section 1 of the Charter.”
Justice Mosley went on to say…
“I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness – justification, transparency and intelligibility – and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration. In my view, there can be only one reasonable interpretation of EA sections 3 and 17 and paragraph 2(c) of the CSIS Act and the Applicants have established that the legal constraints on the discretion of the GIC to declare a public order emergency were not satisfied.”
Christine Van Geyn, the Litigation Director of the Canadian Constitution Foundation said,
“it is extremely gratifying for civil libertarians, but frankly for Canadians of all political stripes who understand the value of public protest in a democracy. We understand the dangers of governments using a massive sledgehammer like the Emergencies Act to shutdown protests.”
You can check out more from Christine on the video below.