Juno News - Carney takes Emergencies Act fight to Supreme Court

00:00:00.000 this is the fighter with chris sims i am chris sims i'm the alberta director for

00:00:09.600 the canadian taxpayers federation folks we've got some work cut out for us because remember

00:00:16.960 how the emergencies act was invoked during the trucker convoy also known as the freedom convoy

00:00:23.200 Remember how people's bank accounts were frozen surrounding that time?

00:00:29.500 In case you forget, take a look at this.

00:00:32.320 The federal government has invoked the Emergencies Act to supplement provincial and territorial capacity to address the blockades and occupations.

00:00:44.720 Information is now being shared by law enforcement with Canada's financial institutions.

00:00:51.120 financial service providers have already taken action based on that information.

00:00:59.140 So you're confirming that accounts have been frozen both personal and corporate but you're

00:01:03.280 not releasing the information? Yeah it feels like it was yesterday and many decades ago all at once

00:01:10.820 feels like a different time but we aren't in a different time we're still dealing with the

00:01:15.720 ramifications of that decision. Now, very importantly, the Canadian Constitution

00:01:21.160 Foundation, which is a legal advocacy group and charity, they got everything together and they

00:01:28.320 fought the invocation of the Emergencies Act saying, whoa, the government overstepped its

00:01:33.660 bounds here. It cannot use the so-called nuclear option on a protest that includes things like

00:01:41.320 certain seizure of people's bank accounts. Hundreds of people had their bank accounts frozen

00:01:46.200 as a result of this action by the government. And so the Canadian Constitution Foundation,

00:01:50.700 they got things together and they fought this in court. And they've won twice, okay? They won at

00:01:58.380 the federal court level and they won at the federal court of appeal, unanimously at the federal court

00:02:04.740 of appeal. And that is where both layers of court said, whoa, yeah, the Trudeau government

00:02:10.960 overstepped its bounds and illegally invoked the Emergencies Act and should not have frozen

00:02:20.340 people's bank accounts. Now, if you're one of the few people watching who didn't agree with

00:02:25.960 the Freedom Convoy and you thought the lockdowns were awesome, etc., etc., okay, you're able to

00:02:32.560 think that, that's fine. The point here, folks, is that you need to be able to protest government

00:02:39.840 public policy openly and noisily in order to express yourself and hold government to account.

00:02:49.620 It was not so long ago in the before times, okay, before 2020, there was a huge carbon tax protest

00:02:56.060 on Parliament Hill, and it was noisy, and there were trucks involved, and there were diesel fumes

00:03:00.660 and all that stuff. Before that, I'm old enough to remember back on Parliament Hill when I used

00:03:05.980 to work there, there was a huge protest against the invasion of Iraq back in the early 2000s.

00:03:13.400 They blocked streets. They surrounded the U.S. Embassy. It was super cold. Again, they didn't

00:03:20.300 invoke the Emergencies Act back then. The point here, folks, is that you need to be able to protest

00:03:27.900 the government's public policies. You need to be able to do so peacefully but noisily, okay?

00:03:35.760 Sometimes protests are disruptive. That's kind of the point. And so think of the things that you

00:03:41.740 care about, okay, that you want to hold the government to account for. Could be anything

00:03:47.200 based on your personal thoughts and your experiences. Imagine attending a protest now

00:03:54.000 against government public policy on those issues and your bank account is frozen and the government

00:04:02.080 then is able to make up law on the fly as it goes it doesn't need to bring it before the house of

00:04:09.000 commons it does not need to go through the senate does not need to get royal assent all of those

00:04:13.440 checks and balances of our parliamentary system out the window that's what happens with the

00:04:19.580 Emergencies Act. It is the latest incarnation, if you're old enough to remember, of the War

00:04:25.500 Measures Act. It's supposed to be a last resort, okay? A big, big deal to do that. And now we've

00:04:33.240 had two courts say, yeah, the Trudeau government should not have done that. Now, so it was a huge

00:04:40.760 victory, okay? At the Federal Court of Appeal, the Canadian Constitution Foundation was the lead

00:04:45.900 group fighting for this, saying you cannot invoke the Emergencies Act, you cannot freeze people's

00:04:51.280 bank accounts just because they're publicly protesting against the government. That's a

00:04:55.820 terrible precedent to set. And both levels of court agreed with the Canadian Constitution Foundation

00:05:02.040 unanimously and said the federal government overstepped the mark here. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

00:05:08.680 should not do that. But you knew there was a catch here, right? On the last possible day that

00:05:15.840 they were able to, within the legal window, the now Carney government, led by Prime Minister

00:05:21.460 Mark Carney, has decided to appeal this to the Supreme Court of Canada. So they're going in for

00:05:29.480 round three. Why did this happen? How did we get here so far? And what's going to happen next when

00:05:37.680 it comes to your right to be able to protest the government? Let's find out. Joining me now is Josh

00:05:44.500 DeHaas. He is with the Canadian Constitution Foundation. They are a legal advocacy group.

00:05:51.080 They are fighting for your rights when it comes to things like constitutional rights and they

00:05:55.520 were right at the forefront both times in court when judges ruled that the Trudeau government

00:06:02.460 should not have invoked the Emergencies Act. Most recently, they just won at the Court of

00:06:08.200 Appeal. If you have not yet met Josh, tune in to their podcast. It's called Not Reserving Judgment.

00:06:15.560 So if you just go in, I listen on Apple. I'm sure it's available elsewhere. Tune in to Not

00:06:19.740 Reserving Judgment. They do funny legal takes at the end of it. And I've never laughed at lawyers

00:06:24.720 so much. Josh, first off, thank you for fighting this. We really appreciate it. Can you just give

00:06:32.440 us how did we get here give us your latest victory because i know that you guys won at the federal

00:06:38.520 court that's where we saw a judge mosley be very decisive in his language and then second correct

00:06:45.500 me from wrong it was at the court of appeal and so because that was unanimous i thought this was

00:06:52.020 over what was that victory so that victory was about a year ago where the uh the federal government

00:06:59.060 asked the Federal Court of Appeal to look at Richard Mosley's decision and decide, you know,

00:07:05.700 did he get this right? I mean, Judge Mosley sided with us, the CCF, on nearly every question about,

00:07:13.100 you know, whether there was a national emergency and there wasn't because all that was left at

00:07:18.380 that point was happening in Ottawa. Whether there was serious violence or a risk of things like

00:07:23.880 terrorism, there wasn't. There were no guns found. There were no real threats of serious violence.

00:07:28.820 whether uh it was wrong to freeze bank accounts without anything resembling a warrant just based

00:07:34.740 on a list of people that the government was emailing around financial institutions and he

00:07:39.940 agreed with us on um the fact that it was illegal to ban protests for everyone including peace

00:07:45.860 people that were acting perfectly uh peacefully so we went back to federal court uh on the

00:07:52.100 government's insistence and all three judges unanimously decided that mosley was right about

00:07:57.620 all of those things. We were right about all of those things. The law was unlawfully invoked and

00:08:04.180 it violated charter rights. And the court decided to sign this from the court, which is some say a

00:08:11.760 signal of how unanimous they actually were. This is such a big deal for the four people who are

00:08:20.200 watching, okay, who had a problem, I would argue, with the Freedom Convoy and the protests and

00:08:25.420 who were super upset and they wanted to crack down, blah, blah, blah, blah.

00:08:29.260 My issue here is that, okay, you may not have agreed with this protest,

00:08:34.540 but what about the next peaceful protest that's on the steps of Parliament Hill

00:08:38.480 that you do agree with?

00:08:40.200 What if it's a general strike?

00:08:41.940 What if it's for environmental issues?

00:08:43.760 Like name something that is a public policy that you disagree with

00:08:49.000 and you're going to have a noisy but disruptive but peaceful protest

00:08:52.400 on the steps, again, of Parliament, I will point out, because I worked there. It's kind of built

00:08:56.420 for that. And then you have something like the Emergencies Act. And then you have something like

00:09:02.340 hundreds of people having their bank accounts frozen. Talk about sending a chill down the spine

00:09:08.860 of people being able to voice their concerns and ultimately hold their government to account,

00:09:14.000 which is why the Taxpayers Federation were like, no, you can't crack down on people like this.

00:09:20.040 And especially with the freezing of the bank accounts, can you describe for our listeners and viewers what the Emergencies Act is and what it's meant to do, what it's intended to do?

00:09:32.620 Yeah, this is really important because I think a lot of people didn't think it was a big deal to invoke this act.

00:09:38.780 But the Emergencies Act is essentially the nuclear option.

00:09:41.800 It is a really big deal. It is a piece of legislation that is reserved for things like wars or very serious epidemics, epidemics more serious than COVID since it wasn't even used during that or apprehended insurrections and, you know, threats of terrorism.

00:09:58.640 and it's only supposed to be used in those extreme situations and that's because in the past

00:10:06.020 governments have abused their power to suspend civil liberties and in the heat of the moment

00:10:11.260 they get a lot of support from Canadians for suspending rights of you know some supposedly

00:10:16.100 scary group but then later on people realize what actually happened and what the government did

00:10:21.080 using this emergencies act that allows them to create new laws and suspend civil liberties

00:10:26.680 for example during the second world war they used it against japanese canadians to take their

00:10:32.460 property just take their property away from them and put them in internment camps forced forcing

00:10:38.240 them to work in the middle of uh rural like cold british columbia mountains because they happen to

00:10:44.340 be japanese canadian these are people who were born in canada and were loyal to canada but because

00:10:49.660 it was the second world war and japanese had attacked the united states um canadians thought

00:10:56.120 this was okay in the heat of the moment and a few years later realized what they had done to their

00:11:00.500 fellow Canadians. 1970 with the crisis in Quebec and there was a real crisis right? Yeah the FOQ

00:11:11.200 crisis there was a real crisis there there was the FOQ were terrorists and they had done bombings

00:11:17.140 they had kidnapped they had killed one person but what Pierre Trudeau then did was round up hundreds

00:11:24.300 of members of the opposition hold them without access to habeas corpus without the ability to

00:11:31.120 go before a judge and challenge their particular detentions using this emergencies act and and

00:11:37.400 you know he did this hundreds of people the FLQ at that time was a few dozen people by that point

00:11:42.200 so hundreds of people that were you know innocent had their rights trampled and that's what happened

00:11:47.020 again here because this act lets governments so instead of parliament you know making a carefully

00:11:53.240 considered law, it lets the Prime Minister essentially create new laws that violate rights

00:11:58.600 on the fly. And that simply did not need to happen with the Freedom Convoy. There was no

00:12:03.680 threat of serious violence. And we had four out of four federal judges say that. And now the

00:12:09.180 federal government, Mark Carney, is trying again. I wanted to stress to your point, and my colleague

00:12:16.420 Franco Teresano interviewed your colleague about this, Christine Van Dyne, a few months ago.

00:12:21.760 And you bring up the what was then called the War Measures Act.

00:12:25.180 And any of us who went through social studies in school or has read a few history books kind of understands what was going on with the FLQ back in that day.

00:12:33.120 But even so, what you're saying is and what I remember from the early 80s is that even though they literally found one of the hostages in the back of a trunk who was no longer with us, like it was a serious situation.

00:12:45.700 even then they had to go back and say whoa we need to revise this we need some checks and balances

00:12:52.460 there need to be tripwires built into this law we're not going to call it the war measures act 0.66

00:12:57.300 anymore we're changing it to the emergencies act there was a whole thing about invoking that law

00:13:02.480 even then correct yeah so um it's it's sometimes hard for people to understand but the the reality

00:13:09.240 is we have these rights like the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures

00:13:14.140 Because once the government has, you know, knocked down your door and entered your house and arrested you and held you for weeks at a time without, you know, without going before a judge or being able to even let your family know where you are, you can't get those things back if the government's done that to you.

00:13:33.520 So we've had a system in place for hundreds of years where if the government wants to do that, they have to go to a judge and say, here's some evidence that this person is a serious risk, that they have committed a crime and show that there is some reasonable, you know, facts to support the government taking that extreme step.

00:13:52.400 And, you know, the emergency act allows emergencies act allows them to suspend that kind of rights, which is what they did with the bank accounts. Normally, you would not be able to just go and freeze somebody's bank account because the government says so. But here it was the government saying banks freeze these accounts or we will fine you instead of going to a judge and saying, you know, here are some people who we think might have broken the law. Can we freeze their their bank accounts?

00:14:17.060 And so, yeah, the Emergencies Act was a response to the FLQ crisis, Japanese internment, and the realization later that while there were, you know, in that case, the FLQ crisis, there were terrorists. There were very, very few of them. And most people that were caught up were innocent. So the Emergencies Act was designed to prevent that from happening again. And here it didn't prevent it, unfortunately.

00:14:39.420 So we had to go to court and get the court to tell the government, knock it off. Don't do this again. And we kind of expected that the Kearney government would stand down and would agree with that and say, look, you know, we messed up here. Maybe they're not going to publicly apologize for that, but at least not challenge the federal court of appeals decision. And yet here we are on the very last day. They are saying, you know, we want we want the Supreme Court to look at this question again.

00:15:07.960 What surprised, it surprised me too, because I covered court most of my life when I was a journalist. And what struck me was Mosley's original language. And I'm definitely paraphrasing here. This is not word for word what the judge said.

00:15:23.820 But he said something along the lines of, you know what, going into this, I kind of thought I was going to rule a certain way. But after reading argument after argument from the CCF, I've changed my mind. Again, I'm paraphrasing, but it was really critical where he just showed this balance and this reasoning of like, you know what? Yeah, they overstepped. They shouldn't have invoked the emergencies act.

00:15:49.180 And then to have the Court of Appeal say, you know what, we agree with Mosley unanimously.

00:15:55.620 I thought maybe this was now done and that the Kearney government, which has been inherited from the Trudeau government, they're pretty much all the same people, would stand down and not bother fighting this again.

00:16:07.660 And again, I want to distress for people watching.

00:16:10.800 So True North, OK, the news wing of Juno News, they were right there.

00:16:15.440 They had tons of people on the ground.

00:16:16.660 so many people were sending in you know cell phone footage from the actual protest that was

00:16:21.380 happening on parliament hill i will just point out personally i worked on the hill for like 20 years

00:16:26.680 there were protests there all the time outside of lockdown outside of covid in the before times

00:16:32.100 they'd fill the hill they'd block wellington blah blah blah wellington street is a bunch of

00:16:38.480 government buildings okay it is one like street right in front of the foot of parliament hill

00:16:43.560 it's full of government buildings this is not you know critical manufacturing infrastructure that is

00:16:49.400 you know getting out bridge girders in emergency situations like even if you blocked it off for

00:16:54.380 ages it's not really an economic thing and I will also point out I don't you don't need to comment

00:16:59.220 if you don't want to Josh but afterwards after the emergencies act all the trucks went home and

00:17:04.620 stuff they kept that thing blocked off for like I think it was a year and a half maybe two years

00:17:09.740 Because I'd go back there and visit family and be like, huh, that fence is still up, hey?

00:17:14.340 But this was still such a huge problem that the Trudeau government thought they should invoke the Emergencies Act.

00:17:19.640 And again, if you're watching this from the Taxpayers Federation, God forbid you want to have a massive anti-carbon tax protest, of which there have been many on Parliament Hill.

00:17:30.620 Say things get a little noisy.

00:17:32.240 Say they block the street.

00:17:34.540 Police are able to move you, right, Josh, away from the street.

00:17:39.020 they're legally able to stop you from blocking traffic. But to your point, why bring in the

00:17:44.680 nuclear option? I guess what I'm asking is, did the government and police have other options

00:17:50.240 when it comes to this protest to get the trucks off the street and to move people away from

00:17:55.340 blocking Wellington? Well, that's the most important point here is, you know, people look

00:18:00.620 at this and they say, well, you know, people were blocking streets. It was really noisy. It was

00:18:05.760 stressful. Put yourself in the shoes of Ottawa residents that live near there and how frustrating

00:18:10.960 that would be. I mean, to your point, Wellington Street is not a street where there's a lot of

00:18:15.460 residential departments and things like that. But all that said, it is illegal to blockade streets

00:18:21.320 and the CCF doesn't condone illegal, you know, illegal forms of protest. You know, you can go to

00:18:28.000 Parliament Hill with a sign, wave your sign. You can march in the street and do things like that.

00:18:32.860 don't blockade streets, don't commit crimes. But the reality is we've had a criminal code that can

00:18:37.400 deal with this for decades. If somebody is blocking the street, that is mischief. And

00:18:43.140 that's very clear in the law. And yet what happened here was police sort of waved in all of these

00:18:48.200 trucks. And then for a couple of weeks, Ottawa police and the Ontario Provincial Police were

00:18:53.360 fighting about whose job it was to clear it. And the reality is that eventually when they did clear

00:18:59.060 this protest, the tools that they use were the criminal code and other other laws that were

00:19:04.860 already in place. So you didn't need to use this huge hammer that violated people's rights by

00:19:10.660 freezing their bank accounts and blocking anyone who wanted to just go, you know, march on Parliament

00:19:15.400 Hill to Parliament Hill or hold up a sign and express themselves against vaccine mandates or

00:19:21.160 anything else. I mean, the way that this was worded was any protest that's likely to lead to

00:19:28.120 breach of the peace attending that or funding that is going to um get you you know up to a five

00:19:35.320 thousand dollar fine and six months in in prison i mean that's any protest chris you and i both

00:19:40.760 worked in journalism there's always going to be someone there who is can be expected to break a

00:19:45.800 law like blockading or um god forbid doing something violent there's always somebody at

00:19:50.920 a protest that's going to break the law and so that that was essentially banning uh protests

00:19:55.800 for a period of time so um we've always had these criminal laws in place and police are

00:20:01.320 understandably sometimes reticent to use them but i think if we all educate ourselves and if police

00:20:06.360 educate themselves on where the line is and they get support from their politicians and police

00:20:11.080 chiefs which is a big problem a lot of the time um then these things won't happen they can they

00:20:15.960 can draw clear lines they can enforce the law and they don't need to violate uh the government doesn't

00:20:20.120 need to violate rights they uh they they can use the existing laws but yeah like i said they need

00:20:25.800 They need politicians that are out there supporting them and are more interested in a rule of law than the politics of it.

00:20:32.680 There was part that just surprised me.

00:20:35.740 And the way that your colleague, Christine Van Gein, had explained it surprised me even more.

00:20:40.940 And that is where it is the freezing of the bank accounts.

00:20:44.220 Now, my understanding, based on the last ruling, was it wasn't, I guess the judges didn't say it was an illegal search and seizure.

00:20:52.320 but it was still wrong for the government to instruct banks to seize bank accounts correct

00:20:59.600 so they they did say it was an illegal search okay one of the interesting things is um section

00:21:06.000 eight is the right to be secure against unreasonable searches and seizures and there's sometimes

00:21:10.400 debate about what's a search and what's a seizure and in this case uh the federal government so

00:21:15.920 richard mosley justice mosley said this was an illegal search and it was an illegal seizure

00:21:21.360 here the federal court said we're convinced it was a legal search but we don't know that

00:21:25.840 it was an illegal seizure um and the search being you know telling banks look for these particular

00:21:33.840 people because we think they're criminals and then seize their bank accounts so it's

00:21:38.640 it has the same legal effect which is that what they did was illegal but it's a sort of

00:21:42.880 a nuance in the law and if we go to the supreme court we'll probably ask them to take another

00:21:47.280 look at that and say, like, no, this wasn't just an illegal search. It was also an illegal seizure.

00:21:52.440 My understanding is, again, I'm paraphrasing. The banks basically said to the RCMP,

00:21:57.740 well, if this is an ongoing thing, how are we to know whose bank account to search for?

00:22:03.680 And they were supposed to, I couldn't believe this part, so please correct me if I'm wrong.

00:22:07.620 They were supposed to keep an eye on the news and social media in a rolling situation

00:22:13.860 and potentially search and or freeze bank accounts is that that true so it wasn't entirely clear i

00:22:21.820 mean they had an ongoing according to the the wording of it it was an ongoing um requirement

00:22:27.840 so basically uh you know police would go and and look um and make it make a list of people that

00:22:34.520 they thought were committing this crime of uh you know attending a protest where some where where it

00:22:41.440 might lead to a breach of the peace and they would give that list and they circulated that

00:22:45.860 list to banks and financial institutions but this was an ongoing requirement so if you're a lawyer

00:22:49.640 sitting in the bank you're saying like wait a minute how are we supposed to continue enforcing

00:22:54.100 this um and we the banks are the ones who are gonna be in trouble if we we don't do this and

00:22:58.740 so they were monitoring social media and they're they were you know basically you're you're a

00:23:03.700 criminal and you know tried and convicted based on uh because a bank saw your your video or your

00:23:11.100 name on social media that is not how free societies are supposed to work they're supposed

00:23:15.500 to uh you know police are supposed to collect evidence they're supposed to go to a judge and

00:23:20.160 then they're the judge is supposed to decide if there's enough evidence and then make an order

00:23:23.700 to the bank and honestly you know i don't think we should be freezing bank accounts of protesters but

00:23:28.920 if you are going to do that for some legitimate reason you know maybe uh maybe they're maybe in

00:23:35.180 the case of real terrorists or something you still need to do that due process and that was

00:23:39.200 the issue here was they just threw due process out the window um it just shows how how little

00:23:45.080 regard they actually have for for charter rights in in um that cabinet that was was there then and

00:23:51.860 is um in many ways still in power and again folks if you haven't been to ottawa um and again especially

00:23:58.660 in the before times it's sleepier now but in the before times i would cover it for national media

00:24:03.360 broadcasters i'd be there on the ground as a producer there was anti-g8 protests there were

00:24:08.200 anti-protests against then former president, George W. Bush.

00:24:11.700 There were protests against taxes, like you name it.

00:24:14.700 There was massive protests. And in some cases they were marching

00:24:17.700 down Rideau Street. They were blocking off the mall. It happened all the time.

00:24:21.100 And heck, I saw it was tear gas and all sorts of stuff back then.

00:24:25.400 There weren't Emergencies Act invoked back then.

00:24:29.300 I even remember the anti-Iraq invasion. I think it was 2003.

00:24:33.800 All I remember is it was really cold because I was working on the Hill at the time.

00:24:37.200 And again,

00:24:38.200 That was a massive protest. There were like 10,000 people there. They were blocking Sussex.

00:24:42.620 They surrounded the U.S. Embassy. Like there were no Emergencies Act invoked then. In fact,

00:24:48.160 the prime minister kind of listened to the protesters back then. That was then Prime

00:24:51.380 Minister Jean Chrétien. So my point here is that even if you're from the left and you don't care

00:24:57.520 about this issue at all and you didn't like the trucker protest, you should still care about

00:25:02.240 whether or not the government is invoking the Emergencies Act and or potentially freezing your

00:25:06.600 bank account because one day you might agree with the protests that is happening around the hill.

00:25:13.080 Anything else we need to touch on before we move on to what happens next, Josh?

00:25:17.880 Well, I just want to say, you know, you mentioned tax, anti-carbon tax protests, things like that.

00:25:24.440 I think taxpayers should be outraged about this because of what the government is spending on

00:25:28.760 lawyers. You know, just for the very first phase of this, we, the Canadian Constitution Foundation,

00:25:34.040 are a legal charity that depends almost 100% on donations from concerned Canadians.

00:25:41.480 We had to fight a government that was able to spend several times more money on outside lawyers,

00:25:48.180 and they hired some of the most expensive lawyers in the country.

00:25:50.560 They spent $2.2 million just on the first phase of this.

00:25:54.200 And so how much are they going to spend going to the Supreme Court of your money,

00:25:58.100 even though four judges out of four that looked at the question have said they acted unlawfully and violated rights?

00:26:04.040 let's just pause there for a second because you're right you guys are a charity you are in

00:26:08.920 there fighting this goliath of government how do people donate to you like right now like how do

00:26:15.180 they send money folks if you have money send money to the ccf for this fight this is definitely the

00:26:20.520 time so go to ccf.ca slash donate so ccf.ca slash donate right dot ccf sorry got it we will include

00:26:32.360 the links in our show notes and I'll be pushing this around on social media a lot. Okay. Super

00:26:38.400 expensive folks. And the CCF does not have your wallet. They don't have government money. So

00:26:43.800 please willingly donate to them if you are able to. If you care about whether or not the government

00:26:49.440 can just freeze your bank account if you're protesting against it for some reason. Okay.

00:26:54.520 Again, any reason. Imagine the reasons you would like to protest against the government.

00:26:58.620 Okay.

00:26:59.000 Now imagine your bank account being frozen.

00:27:01.160 That is doing nothing good for government accountability, which is why the Taxpayers

00:27:05.720 Federation were on side here with the CCF.

00:27:08.500 Okay, Josh, what happens now?

00:27:10.760 Because unfortunately, even though we've had two major federal court rulings saying he

00:27:16.300 should have knocked it off, this is not right, this should not have happened, et cetera.

00:27:19.920 What happens now?

00:27:21.760 So what happens now is the federal government has just asked the Supreme Court for leave

00:27:27.580 to have the Supreme Court hear the case over again. And it's not a given that the Supreme

00:27:33.700 Court will hear the case. You know, it's up to them. And they do this based on whether they think

00:27:39.260 essentially that it's in the public interest and they look at questions that the appeals

00:27:43.740 courts are not going to be able to just handle themselves. You know, one reason that they might 0.98

00:27:51.300 not hear this case is just because the courts below were so unanimous. But a reason that they

00:27:58.280 might be very interested in hearing the case is because these things don't come up very often.

00:28:03.700 You know, the Emergencies Act has never been invoked before, and it might be many years before

00:28:07.920 it is invoked again. So they might say, well, we can put a cap on this and either say, yes,

00:28:13.820 the government is right here. And, you know, all four judges that looked at this are wrong,

00:28:18.960 or they can look at it and say, no, the judges below got this right. The act has high thresholds

00:28:25.720 for what it is to be invoked for good reason, and it shouldn't have been invoked in this case. So

00:28:31.540 we'll see what happens. It's up to the Supreme Court whether they hear it or not. And I think

00:28:37.740 they probably will, I have to say, and we'll be there fighting them. That's too bad. I was hopeful

00:28:43.460 because of your point, because previous courts have been so unanimous that they'd say, you know

00:28:48.420 what we have other things to do. Our colleagues in the lower courts, they handled this and now

00:28:52.880 we're fine. But you think then it's perhaps the novelty of it, for lack of a better term,

00:28:58.280 that they might entertain it and actually hear it? Yeah, that's right. They like to,

00:29:04.180 if it's sort of a once in a generation or once every 10 years type of court case, they often

00:29:09.560 say, well, we should do this so that governments have our guidance. And, you know, we will have

00:29:15.220 to go and decide whether we're going to fight the leave application or if we're just going to

00:29:23.260 accept that we're going to the Supreme Court and settling it. But either way, we're going to have

00:29:28.680 to be prepared to fight this big battle. Now, I know you're here for the CCF, but correct me if

00:29:35.900 I'm wrong. At the lower courts, at least in the case of Justice Mosley's court level, I believe

00:29:42.020 like the canadian civil liberties uh association there was there was a group who i would generally

00:29:47.620 characterize as being more left-wing but still in defense of civil liberties if that's fair to say

00:29:52.900 that's my words not josh's um that were also intervening and helping and saying this was wrong

00:29:59.300 the emergencies act was wrong and it shouldn't have happened is that that's correct right yeah

00:30:03.780 so i'll say so civil liberties uh belong to everyone you know you've made this point chris

00:30:09.140 that uh when rights are violated whether we're talking about search and seizure rights or freedom

00:30:13.620 of expression rights those rights belong to everyone from left to right to everything in

00:30:19.140 between so um there were various groups there were more there was a more right-wing group than us and

00:30:25.700 there was a more left-wing group than us the ccla um that brought this challenge but in the end it

00:30:30.980 was only us and the ccla and a couple of individuals who were granted standing to fight this because

00:30:37.300 we have you know we have the the legal capacity we've got the lawyers that are able to actually

00:30:43.220 make um the best arguments to put before the court so the ccla and and the canadian constitution

00:30:48.500 foundation got standing and frankly it was our arguments the canadian constitution foundation

00:30:53.620 that uh really carried the day at the federal court of appeal so uh you know our lawyers on this

00:31:01.620 Sujit Chowdhury and Jananiya Shang-McGonathan were there and they made the arguments that really

00:31:08.980 are reflected throughout the the Federal Court of Appeals decision. So we will be there again

00:31:14.500 and we have we have great lawyers on it even if we don't have the budget that the federal government

00:31:18.740 has. Are you hearing from other groups? Like I think a lot of people who are who are laymen

00:31:24.660 who are watching this were happy to see that how do i put this um a wider variety of groups

00:31:31.700 came together to fight this together which was great like hearing from you know more balanced

00:31:38.340 groups was great i think because it makes the argument stronger that way it doesn't matter if

00:31:43.460 you're protesting these lockdowns it doesn't matter if you're protesting an iraq war it doesn't matter

00:31:48.180 if you're protesting a carbon tax they're coming together saying we have the right to express

00:31:53.060 ourselves in protest and not have our bank accounts frozen, which is the entire point.

00:31:58.000 Have you been hearing from other groups so far going into the Supreme Court level? Are you guys

00:32:02.520 going in there by yourselves? I think it's obvious that we will be there with CCLA. I think it's

00:32:09.140 obvious that the CCF and CCLA will be leading the charge again this time. But there can be

00:32:15.080 interveners. The CCF intervenes all the time in Supreme Court cases, which means you go to the

00:32:20.660 court and you say look we represent a different segment of the public than the parties and we

00:32:26.160 have experience giving arguments and we have some arguments to make that you might not otherwise

00:32:31.160 consider that can help settle this legal question and so there will be other groups that will be

00:32:36.340 there and it'll be interesting to see who's there i i wouldn't be surprised if it runs the entire

00:32:40.800 gamut from sort of the far left to the the far right of um of groups wanting to be there to say

00:32:47.960 look, we, you know, we see the problem here, which is that if a government can do this against the freedom convoy, they can do this against pro-Palestinian protesters.

00:32:58.000 They can do this against anti-immigration protesters or pro-immigration protesters or anti-tax protests.

00:33:07.460 Right. So so we think there will be a wide range of groups there and that most of them will be saying, look, we're here to preserve protest rights.

00:33:14.980 and we don't think that what the government did here was was justified so um bring it on

00:33:20.180 when will we know if they want to bring it on um those particular groups uh no if the supreme

00:33:29.200 court of canada is going to hear this yeah we're expecting to hear from them no no it's all right

00:33:33.320 we're already ready to bring it on but when we hear from the supreme court of canada the next

00:33:37.080 several months we'll know okay yeah okay because things move at the speed of court wonderful they

00:33:43.380 do not move quickly um i mean the supreme court moves a bit faster once you're there usually they

00:33:47.740 hear things within a year um then it's sometimes a year till till you get a decision so um that's

00:33:54.060 fast for canadian courts but um yeah it'll be a couple years before it's all all resolved

00:33:58.460 potentially i love how lawyers say that a year is quickly that's just awesome all right josh

00:34:04.240 anything i haven't anything i haven't asked you okay that you think it's super important for

00:34:09.160 Do you know listeners, do you know viewers and everybody watching on YouTube, frankly, to find out about anything I haven't asked you yet?

00:34:16.340 No, but I just want to say, you know, continue to talk to your friends and your neighbors about why this why this matters, because in the heat of the moment, a lot of people just assumed it was justified.

00:34:26.400 But they don't realize the implications for future protests or future privacy in terms of, you know, not having your bank account searched and seized because you are politically an enemy of the government.

00:34:37.640 So keep talking to your friends and your neighbors, and thanks for caring about this.

00:34:42.320 Awesome. Once again, thank you so much for joining us, Josh.

00:34:45.540 Keep fighting for people's personal freedoms. Appreciate it.

00:34:48.640 You too, Chris. Take care.

00:34:50.320 Folks, you know what to do, okay?

00:34:52.820 As you can hear, Josh and all of his colleagues there at the Canadian Constitution Foundation,

00:34:59.060 they're up against the Goliath of government.

00:35:02.060 The Goliath of government, they've got your wallet.

00:35:04.120 They've got endless monies to fight this at the Supreme Court of Canada, and it's groups like the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is a charity, that are in there fighting for this.

00:35:17.120 They've published books on issues like this.

00:35:19.820 They've argued this at now two levels of court.

00:35:23.220 They're right there.

00:35:24.300 And we know that True North was right there.

00:35:27.300 They were right there on Wellington Street talking to protesters, etc.

00:35:31.360 They gave it full coverage back in the day.

00:35:33.560 There's been a book published by True North and now Juno. It's really important that people understand what happened here. And most importantly, why the Emergencies Act is, as Josh DeHaas just described it, why the Emergencies Act is the nuclear option and why we need to make sure that governments don't use that option against what is relatively peaceful protest.

00:36:01.580 again folks but in the before times before 2020 there was a huge anti-carbon tax protest i remember

00:36:09.120 in fact i i think there was even a convoy that drove out there with trucks from western canada

00:36:14.540 at the time and so and it was noisy and there were diesel fumes in ottawa and stuff and again

00:36:19.760 it was purely about the carbon tax which the canadian taxpayers federation has been fighting

00:36:24.420 since it was first put through so if the government can all of a sudden freeze people's

00:36:30.900 bank accounts because they don't like a certain protest, instead of just getting the police to

00:36:36.480 remove protesters from blocking a street, as is normal, we're in trouble. Because if we can't

00:36:44.220 hold government to account, then how are we going to make sure that they're not taxing us out of

00:36:49.980 house and home, wasting our money, and manipulating how we can actually live our lives? So it's super

00:36:57.040 important. No matter if you are on the left or the right, so-called, or your family is on the left

00:37:03.740 or the right, being able to assemble and express yourself in order to hold the government to

00:37:09.900 account is essential, okay, to how we move going forward. So be sure, if you're able to, to go

00:37:17.220 donate to the Canadian Constitution Foundation, because they're going to have to be in the arena

00:37:21.960 again, as this thing sounds like it might be going all the way to the Supreme Court.

00:37:27.660 Folks, if you haven't done so yet, be sure to head on over to Juno News. Subscribe to Juno News

00:37:34.340 because we are not funded by the government. The Juno channel is not funded by the government.

00:37:40.180 Journalists should never be funded by the government because it's a direct conflict

00:37:44.260 of interest. Journalists are supposed to be holding the government to account. But if a

00:37:50.280 journalist is counting on the government for his or her paycheck, that's not going to happen very

00:37:55.160 well now, is it? So remember, head on over to Canadian Constitution Foundation, show them your

00:38:00.460 support, subscribe to Juneau News, and be sure to subscribe to the YouTube channel. Most importantly,

00:38:07.900 share this interview with your friends and family who need to know.

Juno News - March 22, 2026

Carney takes Emergencies Act fight to Supreme Court

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