In a National Post editorial, published 27 January, 2024 we find the following quote with respect to the recently issued Court decision on activating the Emergencies Act by the Trudeau Government:
“Of course the Liberals are going to appeal the Federal Court’s ruling, issued Tuesday, that their use of the Emergencies Act in February 2022 was unjustified. They have barely even tried to persuade the public, or the courts, that their choice to declare a national emergency met the standard set out in law. They just want to be cleared for going outside those legal bounds. That is, the Liberals want the courts to clear a political decision to violate the law…
The Liberals, unable to point to actual serious violence, also tried to focus on the threat. Similar to Trudeau’s testimony to the inquiry, the order-in-council declaring a national emergency referred to the “potential” for violence.
But legally, that falls far short of the standard”.
Our Prime Minister’s answers are slimier than the Lamprey Ells found in lake Ontario!
Well and good. It was surely a tense time for all concerned. The Ambassador Bridge to the United States was blockaded, the border in Alberta at Coutts was also blockaded by men who allegedly had guns and heaven forbid, pipe bombs, posing the ultimate threat to Canadian security.
Downtown Ottawa was a mess with trucks parked everywhere blowing their horns at all hours of the night keeping the rats awake at 24 Sussex and sacrilege, half naked men in a portable hot tub on Wellington Street!
Our Prime Minister appearing nightly on the news to tell us woefully inadequate Canadian types, in his mind, what dire straits the Government was in because law enforcement could not/would not do their job. He even tried to blame the Ambassador blockade on Premier Ford of Ontario. Hell, Ford was too busy plotting to open up the Greenbelt for developers to worry about such trivia as commerce coming to a halt.
Once resolved the whole thing ended up the subject of a Court challenge. Did the Government go too far in declaring an emergency or did it not? The sixty-four thousand dollar (for those old enough to know what that was) question. So, what did the Courts say?
From an article from Christopher Nardi in the National Post of 23 January, 2024 we find the following quote from Justice Mosley:
“I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation (of the Emergencies Act) 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 Justice Richard Mosley wrote in one of four rulings on the matter Tuesday”.
Sounds not unlike the approach taken by the Trudeau Government with respect to Bill C-21 and the Order-In-Council banning and restricting certain firearms, again, under the rubric of Public Safety.
For those worried about the return of Mr. Trump below the border threatening democracy, you may be barking up the wrong tree as disaster seems to already be here north of the forty-ninth.