On Feb 17, 2022, the Canadian Constitution Foundation announced its legal challenge to the federal government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act. The federal government invoked this extraordinary piece of legislation in response to protests concentrated in the Ottawa region against various pandemic mandates.
The Emergencies Act was enacted to replace the discredited pre-Charter War Measures Act, which was used during the Second World War to intern Japanese Canadians and Italian Canadians, and during the FLQ Crisis in Quebec. The Act was drafted carefully and narrowly, to minimize the federal governments to abuse emergency powers again and requires that the federal government demonstrate that a situation cannot be effectively dealt with under any other law of Canada.
The threshold for using the Emergencies Act is extremely high and has not been met.
The decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, which had never been used previously, is unprecedented. Therefore it is vital that we push back against its misuse in this instance so that a precedent is set that discourages future governments from flippantly using its provisions when it is unnecessary.
The CCF is represented by lawyers Sujit Choudhry and Janani Shanmuganathan. Our factum can be found here.
On January 23, Justice Mosley of the Federal Court of Canada accepted the CCF’s arguments that the invocation of the Emergencies Act in response to the Freedom Convoy protests was unreasonable and violated the Charter rights to expression and security against unreasonable searches and seizures (read our full release).
This was a very big victory for all Canadians and the Canadian Constitution Foundation. The government filed for an appeal shortly following the decision and we look forward to ensuring this decision stands in a higher court.
Emergencies Act challenge
CCF Launch: February 17, 2022
Jurisdiction: Federal
Status: Ongoing
Next Key Date: TBA
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