Court hands Trudeau embarrassing loss over Freedom Convoy crackdown: 'Not justified'

A Canadian federal court judge has ruled Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act to crack down on the famous 2022 Freedom Convoy was "not justified" and a violation of rights.

"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," Federal Court Judge Richard Mosley said in his decision. 

Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland defended the government’s actions, claiming they had invoked the act as an "option of the last resort." 

"We acted to secure and protect Canada and to secure and protect the national interests," Freeland told reporters following the ruling, adding that "these were not easy decisions." 

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The government has already announced its plan to appeal the ruling.

"Invoking the Emergencies Act is something that should be done very rarely, if ever," Paul Champ, a lawyer representing Ottawa residents and businesses in the class-action lawsuit against the government, told reporters. 

"The Freedom Convoy trucks occupying the streets of downtown Ottawa, the way they made the lives of Ottawa residents and businesses and workers miserable – the court clearly conveys that," he added.

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The protest in January 2022 initially targeted vaccine mandates enforced against cross-border truckers moving between the U.S. and Canada but soon grew into a broader anti-mandates demonstration. 

Truckers and pedestrians occupied the downtown Ottawa area and Parliament Hill, leading to concerns of exacerbating the supply chain crisis plaguing the economy at the time. 

Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act – the first use of the act since it passed in 1988 – as a means of allowing a powerful police crackdown on the protests and the forced removal of the vehicles blocking the streets. The act also allowed the Canadian government to freeze the bank accounts of those suspected of orchestrating and participating in the protests.

The act allows a public order emergency but only in response to "an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada that are so serious as to be a national emergency," according to CBC. Mosley argued the use of the act did not meet these requirements. 

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Mosley’s ruling runs counter a 2023 federal inquiry into the use of the act, which found the government had proven that while the invocation might prove "drastic," it was not "dictatorial," according to the BBC. 

"Lawful protest descended into lawlessness, culminating in a national emergency," Justice Paul Rouleau, who led the inquiry, said in his report. 

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Trudeau insisted in November 2022 that he felt "absolutely, absolutely serene and confident" he made the right choice invoking the Emergencies Act. 

Documents revealed during the inquiry found that U.S. officials had pressured the Canadian government to shut down the protests and remove the blockades so cross-border trade could resume. Freeland, in an email to her staff on Feb. 10, 2022, had stressed that American officials were "very, very, very worried."