Juno News - Federal Court declares use of Emergencies Act UNCONSTITUTIONAL

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 welcome to canada's most irreverent talk show this is the andrew lawton show brought to you by true

00:01:20.440 north hello and welcome to you all this is canada's most irreverent talk show the andrew

00:01:30.940 lawton show on true north live on this tuesday january 23rd 2024 just after one o'clock eastern

00:01:39.560 time that makes it just afternoon central if you are in beautiful alberta it is a nice mid-morning

00:01:46.800 11 a.m. for you on the west coast slightly earlier mid-morning 10 a.m. If you're in

00:01:53.260 Atlantic Canada I always get confused with the half-hour time zone but some very very good news

00:01:58.380 for you all if you are supporters of freedom as I suspect many of you I certainly hope many of you

00:02:04.220 are after several years of doing this show just in hot off the presses from the federal court of

00:02:10.180 Canada, the Emergencies Act regulations invoked by the federal government just two years less

00:02:17.120 a month ago were outside the parameters of the Emergencies Act and more crucially were

00:02:24.040 unconstitutional. This is a lengthy decision that just came out within the last hour, 190 pages from

00:02:31.760 the federal court. I'll get down to brass tacks here. It is declared that the decision to issue

00:02:39.220 the proclamation and the associated regulations and order was unreasonable and ultra vires the

00:02:46.140 emergencies act that means outside the legal bounds of it it is declared that the regulations

00:02:52.180 infringed section 2b of the charter and declared that the order infringed section 8 of the charter

00:02:59.220 and that neither infringement was justified under section 1. 2b is freedom of expression part of the

00:03:07.400 charter sacrosanct human right in this country. And Section 8 is a more interesting one. Section

00:03:14.360 8 refers, well, it's illegal rights, but we'll get to that when we talk to Christine Van Gein,

00:03:19.660 who is the litigation director with the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and joins us now.

00:03:25.280 Christine, I know you've not had, lawyers are very speedy readers, but I know you haven't had

00:03:30.420 time to fully digest 190 pages just yet. But what's your early reaction on this case here?

00:03:36.880 and what was your role in it? So our role, we were one of the parties that brought this. This

00:03:41.560 was brought by the Canadian Constitution Foundation, which is a national legal charity

00:03:46.700 that fights for fundamental freedoms in Canada, as well as by the Canadian Civil Liberties

00:03:51.680 Association, as well as by another organization called Frontline Nurses, and by some individuals

00:03:58.040 who had been affected by the emergency measures. For example, individuals who were arrested for

00:04:06.240 breaching, or I guess they actually weren't charged under the emergency measures, but they

00:04:11.320 did have their bank accounts frozen. So the reaction is I'm absolutely thrilled. I didn't

00:04:21.640 know what I was expecting. You know, you kind of try to brace yourself when you are dealing with

00:04:26.940 this complex litigation that goes on for extended periods of time. I mean, I didn't know what to

00:04:33.860 expect um my my best hope i think was was surpassed with this because we really won on everything

00:04:42.820 um the the crux of this case is that the invocation of the emergencies act in response

00:04:51.780 to the 2022 freedom convoy was unreasonable and ultra veras which means outside the scope of the

00:04:59.060 authority of the government and then the other major issue was whether or not the actual

00:05:06.180 regulations that were created under the emergencies act which is prohibitions on gatherings that

00:05:12.580 prohibited people from protesting and a um or going to a prohibited protest and then the financial

00:05:21.220 the economic measures which ended up freezing people's bank accounts and the court found that

00:05:27.380 those measures were unconstitutional they violated the canadian charter of rights and freedoms

00:05:31.860 and there's also some discussion in the case about the bill of rights i i mean i'm only i'm

00:05:37.460 90 pages into the decision which i got less than an hour ago i'm trying to get through it as quickly

00:05:43.140 as i can for initial reaction just to see what the big issues are and then i'm going to obviously do

00:05:49.300 an even deeper dive after this but my initial reaction is this surpassed my my expectations

00:05:55.460 this is a wonderful day for fundamental freedoms in canada for the right to protest and a wonderful

00:06:02.980 day on i mean i i think a lot of canadians throughout the pandemic had their faith in our

00:06:08.980 our justice system really challenged because there were a lot of decisions that didn't come

00:06:15.300 down the way we had hoped this is a huge exception and i think that in the the context of the

00:06:21.380 a pandemic, the invocation of the Emergencies Act was the most extreme piece of government

00:06:26.240 overreach. And here we have a court slapping down the Trudeau government for having done that.

00:06:31.600 And just to put a finer point on this, and please, if I've misrepresented this,

00:06:36.120 correct me, but as I understand it from what you said and what I've read so far,

00:06:39.800 the court has found that there was no emergency, basically, in keeping with what the Emergencies

00:06:45.700 Act has said. And even if there were, the measures employed were not constitutional.

00:06:50.880 am i understanding that correctly so i haven't got to the second part of your question yet but

00:06:55.920 i'll read directly from paragraph 255 for you for these reasons i conclude that there was no

00:07:02.100 national emergency justifying the invocation of the emergencies act and the decision to do so

00:07:07.440 was therefore unreasonable and ultra virized should i be found to have aired he then goes on

00:07:12.660 to discuss uh some of the different threshold requirements um because the the invocation of

00:07:17.820 emergencies act that piece of extraordinary legislation actually has a number of internal

00:07:22.620 thresholds like uh threat to the security of canada and a requirement that the law be a law

00:07:28.380 of last resort now 90 pages in i'm not at those parts yet and i don't uh and i haven't got to the

00:07:34.300 charter arguments on the actual regulation so i can't comment on that yet but i know the result

00:07:40.780 which is that they were found to have been a charter breach and and not saved by by section

00:07:46.540 in one of the charter. Let me just pull ourselves out of this decision for a moment here. And I

00:07:51.540 just want to, I mean, maybe this is a bit of a civics lesson for people, but we went through

00:07:55.580 this massive public order emergency commission last year. And at the end of that, Justice

00:08:00.800 Rouleau or Commissioner Rouleau had concluded that the Emergencies Act was satisfied. That

00:08:06.560 threshold was satisfied. So which is more important really? And how do we rationalize

00:08:12.720 and sort of reconcile these two seemingly, well, not seemingly, these two inherently

00:08:17.200 contradictory findings? This is a really important question. This case is no question

00:08:23.560 more important. The actual decision from a court has much more weight. The Rouleau decision has

00:08:31.400 no precedential value. It would be of political consequence. But I don't want to, you know,

00:08:37.480 invalidate that as an exercise because one of the really important things that was we that helped us

00:08:43.840 to actually achieve this result in the court case was because the ruleau commission had this extreme

00:08:49.820 level of transparency and we were able to access all kinds of cabinet documents that we otherwise

00:08:54.980 would not be able to access which actually we had in this case the government had been fighting us

00:09:01.360 over the disclosure of these documents that we wanted and we were able to access them because

00:09:05.160 they ended up becoming public through the Rouleau inquiry. So that, even though I totally disagree

00:09:10.680 with the result in that inquiry, it still was a really important part of the process that led us

00:09:17.540 to this result, which has a huge bearing and weight on how this emergency legislation can

00:09:26.400 be used in the future. I think the long-term impact of this decision is that this will reign

00:09:32.500 in some of the concerns that we had over the government now having you know unleashed the

00:09:38.900 kraken and they've now used this piece of extraordinary legislation i think they're

00:09:44.580 there's going to be a lot more um restraint now because they've really been slapped down for this

00:09:50.900 this is an absolute loss for the trudeau government they couldn't they couldn't have lost worse like

00:09:57.460 this yeah that's fair and i know this is not a coveted case i think a lot of times it gets

00:10:01.620 lumped into the landscape of covid because that was the environment the birth the freedom convoy

00:10:07.220 which to the government birth the the emergencies act so this isn't a coveted case but i do think

00:10:11.460 if we look at all of the pandemic challenges that have been uh there in the last couple of years

00:10:16.500 one thing you and i have talked about i'll say lamented on stage and on this show has been how

00:10:20.740 deferential uh courts have been to the state over this period including on freedom of expression

00:10:26.500 issues. So it is, it is really a divergence from what a lot of the jurisprudence has been on some

00:10:33.060 of these cases of this era over the last few years, is it not? It is. Yes. I think that this

00:10:39.240 was a case though, where I think one of the issues with the COVID era cases was evidence

00:10:45.400 and that it was difficult to litigate with the scientific evidence as the basis about,

00:10:52.860 you know, how dangerous is the virus? And there was a lot of deference given to the government

00:10:59.980 about that. And there was a kind of a lack of scientific evidence that was in the court cases

00:11:06.400 themselves. Now, some of the cases, there were some in Manitoba that had some discussion of the

00:11:11.160 evidence, but for the most part, it was not litigated on the science. So it was, in the end,

00:11:18.540 the courts ended up having deference to the government. In this case, this is more straight

00:11:23.800 principles of law. And there actually, in this case, was a huge amount of evidence because of

00:11:31.020 the Rouleau inquiry. We had all of these affidavits. We had all this evidence from

00:11:34.700 testimony, from policing experts, from cabinet ministers. So there was a lot here to help the

00:11:42.940 justice reach this conclusion. And you also had the government attempting to have this dismissed

00:11:49.500 on mootness grounds, which the judge clearly did not do. And I think we can be very grateful for

00:11:54.980 that fact. But that was one that I found quite notable that we have such a massive, unprecedented

00:12:00.020 legislation, incredibly controversial usage of it. And the government didn't even want there to be

00:12:05.220 a judicial review on it. Yeah, I think that that's such an offensive notion that this piece of

00:12:11.060 extraordinary legislation that by its very nature is temporary. Anytime you invoke emergencies are

00:12:17.920 just temporary by nature. That's what makes it an emergency. And the idea that you could never

00:12:23.640 scrutinize this, the use of this legislation, because by the time you get to court, the

00:12:29.640 emergency is over. This is like a preposterous type of suggestion by the government. And now

00:12:35.260 the the judge justice mosley did find that the case was moot i mean the the facts on the ground

00:12:41.060 were were done but of course courts have the inherent discretion to hear a case in spite of

00:12:49.200 its mootness so he did proceed to hear the case even though you know the the protests obviously

00:12:54.720 had resolved and the emergency declaration had been revoked it was only in place for a very

00:13:00.140 short period of time. And this was a huge issue in the hearing where Justice Mosley just did not

00:13:05.700 seem to be buying it at the hearing. He said, in what context would a court ever hear

00:13:12.200 a challenge? Because it's always going to be over. The emergency is always going to be over

00:13:18.660 by the time it gets to court. And the attorney general really tried to wiggle out of that one.

00:13:25.280 But I mean, it is what it is. And the judge is right in this case. It's always going to be over by the time you get to court. And we're happy that this absurd mootness argument was rejected.

00:13:38.340 it. We are going to have you back tomorrow for a deeper dive into this once you've had a chance to

00:13:44.620 pour over it here. And I know there are going to be a few things that you'll be looking out for

00:13:48.500 specifically, but I just wanted to ask you, is this effectively a guarantee that the government

00:13:53.860 is going to appeal this to the federal court of appeal? If I were a betting woman, I would bet

00:14:00.620 they're going to seek leave to appeal it's they haven't said so yet but i would be absolutely

00:14:08.060 shocked if they don't appeal i mean i'm interested to see what the government's statement on this is

00:14:13.500 um because i mean it's a brutal loss for the trudeau government today well and you may not

00:14:19.860 have seen this they had a bunch of media adherences planned from ministers who have all now gone into

00:14:24.880 hiding in montreal like bill blair was about to speak and now they've like you know shoved him

00:14:29.460 the back door and canceled this so one thing i would say though andrew is that i mean i am i'm

00:14:35.380 certain that the government is going to try to appeal this or they're going to seek leave to

00:14:39.300 appeal they haven't said it but i would bet that they are and um this is a case that is tremendously

00:14:45.380 expensive so if your supporters care about this issue and they want to see us successfully fight

00:14:51.860 an inevitable appeal they can make a donation to our legal fees at the ccf.ca donate yeah there

00:14:58.900 There was no, I noted in the decision, there was no cost award here.

00:15:01.960 So it's not even like the government is, you know, forced to give you a token for, you know, having bought this.

00:15:08.060 We actually typically don't ask for costs.

00:15:10.740 There's maybe a few exceptions, but I mean, that's taking your and my money, Andrew, because we're always suing the government.

00:15:16.940 You're taking the libertarian approach.

00:15:18.460 Let those who support this fight support you.

00:15:20.700 Well, that website is theccf.ca.

00:15:23.320 Again, Christine, congratulations.

00:15:25.120 We will talk to you on the show tomorrow in a bit more depth on this, but well done.

00:15:28.620 Wonderful.

00:15:28.900 Thanks, Andrew. Thank you. Thank you so much. That was Christine Van Gein, litigation director for the Canadian Constitution Foundation. Incredibly important decision. Now, I've been working my way through it. Like I said, I can read quickly. The judge has written it in a fairly clear way, but you're still reading in some ways legalese and you're still reading 190 pages of it.

00:15:50.640 So this is going to take a little bit of time for me.

00:15:53.380 So I'm learning some things as we go here.

00:15:56.360 Just a couple of points that I want to stress.

00:15:58.640 If you're just tuning into this show, the federal court has found the Emergencies Act was unjustified.

00:16:05.280 The measures invoked with the Emergencies Act were unconstitutional.

00:16:10.540 So this is crucial because the judge could have found one or the other.

00:16:14.460 He could have said, yes, there was an emergency, but no, the measures weren't valid or no,

00:16:18.620 there wasn't an emergency, but these measures were keeping with the Constitution. The judges

00:16:24.120 said both were wrong. So the federal government found an emergency that in the law did not exist

00:16:31.380 and more importantly used that emergency to do things that were utterly unconstitutional. What

00:16:36.440 things, you may ask? Well, freezing people's bank accounts, warrantless seizure of finances,

00:16:42.240 arresting people for participating in whatever the government deemed was an illegal assembly.

00:16:48.060 this is massive and as Christine Van Gein just said this is more important than the Public Order

00:16:53.480 Emergency Commission because in this case we have a decision that is binding we have a decision that

00:16:59.760 has precedential value we have a decision that is telling the government you broke the law Justin

00:17:06.460 Trudeau broke the law so no wonder the Liberal government and its ministers right now have gone

00:17:12.100 into hiding because they how are they going to answer this utter slapdown and look I've had a

00:17:17.540 fair number of things to say about courts in Canada that have been critical, because I found

00:17:22.840 courts have been overly deferential to the government, especially on matters of civil

00:17:26.980 liberties. But this is a case of a judge, and by extension, the court, the judge represents the

00:17:33.240 court in this decision, doing something that is actually, it looks like, very well rooted in what

00:17:39.480 the law is supposed to be. Just a few other reactions I'll point out here. Andrew Scheer,

00:17:45.180 who is the former leader of the Conservatives, and now he is a lieutenant, a house leader for

00:17:51.100 Pierre Pauliev, has said that Justin Trudeau froze bank accounts and had protesters trampled.

00:17:57.460 Never again let Trudeau give a lecture about charter rights. We have a post here on X,

00:18:04.660 formerly Twitter, my colleague Cosman Georgia pulled out here. It is a scathing

00:18:09.500 indictment of the government and its use of the Emergencies Act here. The highlighted bit

00:18:14.900 says as follows, the Emergencies Act is a tool of last resort. The government, that's what GIC is,

00:18:22.300 cannot invoke the Emergencies Act because it is convenient or because it may work better than

00:18:28.180 other tools at their disposal or available to the provinces. The evidence is clear that the

00:18:33.900 majority of the provinces were able to deal with the situation using other federal law, such as

00:18:39.800 the criminal code and their own legislation. So this is a court finding, a court finding what

00:18:46.640 every police agency and every provincial government except Ontario said, which is that we could have

00:18:52.140 dealt with this on our own. The federal government put the Emergencies Act in place when it was not

00:18:57.360 needed and was not requested. And you may say, well, hang on, it worked, they put it in and then

00:19:02.740 a few days later the convoy was gone. Yeah, but that was because police decisions, police decisions

00:19:09.120 were not moving towards what the outcome was.

00:19:12.720 They had a plan in place.

00:19:13.800 They weren't actioning that plan,

00:19:15.220 but the judge there really honed in on that

00:19:18.100 and said, this does not mean

00:19:19.700 that because it would be convenient,

00:19:21.140 it is justified or legal.

00:19:24.920 So what we saw here is that the government took its,

00:19:29.420 well, the government gave police marching orders.

00:19:31.860 The government found justification where none existed

00:19:35.820 and used it to trample on your freedoms.

00:19:39.840 We see reactions coming from a number of Conservative members of Parliament here.

00:19:44.260 Blaine Calkins, who is a Conservative MP, says,

00:19:46.620 Trudeau has no business continuing as the Prime Minister of Canada.

00:19:50.460 Wedge, stigmatize, and divide the Trudeau way.

00:19:54.080 What restitution is owed to those harmed by this abuse of power?

00:19:58.080 Apologies, Trudeau, millions of Canadians are waiting.

00:20:01.840 That's a reaction from Blaine Calkins.

00:20:03.400 Michelle Rempel-Garner, Conservative MP from Calgary, says this is a huge decision.

00:20:08.640 I have reached out to Conservative leader Pierre Polyev's office,

00:20:12.440 and they've told me that a statement is coming, although we haven't had it yet.

00:20:16.500 I'm assuming they're whipping that up post-taste, and we'll get to it now.

00:20:20.500 Everyone's, like, texting me.

00:20:22.320 So this is breaking news here.

00:20:24.360 I hope it's accurate.

00:20:25.240 It's coming from one colleague.

00:20:26.220 I'm just going to read it because you're telling me this.

00:20:28.140 It better be true.

00:20:28.820 So, Chrystia Freeland has said, oh, and maybe I won't say it.

00:20:33.680 We're being asked about a source now.

00:20:35.740 Okay.

00:20:36.940 Okay, according to CPAC, thank you, Artem.

00:20:39.900 Chrystia Freeland has said they are appealing the decision.

00:20:43.380 So, I don't even know if they've read the decision yet,

00:20:45.580 but the federal government has already determined it is going to be appealing this decision.

00:20:49.700 So, the federal government, despite this strong rebuke and condemnation,

00:20:53.700 Condemnation, the federal government, is holding firm on this and saying we did everything right.

00:20:59.560 So this is quite massive.

00:21:01.640 We're going to continue to discuss this as the show progresses here.

00:21:05.460 But just to recap, the Emergencies Act, unconstitutional.

00:21:09.100 The measures brought into place under the Emergencies Act, unconstitutional.

00:21:14.140 The federal government, unrepentant.

00:21:16.280 So a little bit of wordplay for you here on this Tuesday afternoon.

00:21:20.720 This is so big.

00:21:22.120 and let me just point out here the obvious well may not be obvious to a lot of you today is january

00:21:27.320 23rd it was two years ago exactly two years ago to this day that the first convoy of trucks left

00:21:35.320 from delta british columbia on their way to ottawa for what became known as the freedom convoy this

00:21:40.840 is the protest that picked up steam in alberta was later joined by groups in saskatchewan manitoba

00:21:46.520 groups from ontario quebec and atlantic canada came they all converged in uh well basically

00:21:52.040 january 28th 29th uh we'll do a little anniversary for that as well they converged on ottawa and they

00:21:59.720 did this because of a message for freedom now you can say that you don't like the tactics you don't

00:22:04.920 like some of the people involved but this protest about covid restrictions and vaccine mandates

00:22:10.440 became about something so much more when the government showed the lengths that was prepared

00:22:15.640 to employ the emergencies act to rein in and clamp down on peaceful protesters that's exactly

00:22:23.080 what happened and that was why even people who did not support the protest and did not support

00:22:27.800 the convoy were condemning the emergency exact even paul champ now paul champ is a lawyer

00:22:34.520 who's representing the people in ottawa in this like absurd multi-gazillion dollar class action

00:22:40.600 against the convoy even he said he opposed the emergencies act so pete you didn't have to like

00:22:45.960 the convoy to realize that the government had overreached here want to bring into the discussion

00:22:50.680 keith wilson who is uh well literally was the most visible and prominent lawyer representing

00:22:57.240 the convoy organizers uh during the freedom convoy he was stationed in ottawa and thankfully

00:23:03.000 got out without his bank accounts being frozen uh keith wilson joins us now keith it's good to

00:23:07.880 to talk to you again. Thanks for coming on today. Thank you. So again, I know this is something that

00:23:13.260 will take some time to fully digest here, but what's your early reaction to this decision?

00:23:18.440 And let me just say, given how pessimistic a lot of people who advocate for constitutional

00:23:23.040 freedoms have been about courts, are you surprised by the decision? I'd say I'm relieved. I was

00:23:29.320 getting, as you know, Andrew, very, very concerned about the institution of our courts and whether

00:23:35.400 lady justice blindfold had been pulled down because it certainly seemed like it had with

00:23:40.840 a number of the decisions including my case involving former premier peckford on behalf

00:23:45.680 of six million canadians unvaccinated canadians who lost their mobility rights but this is a great

00:23:50.200 day for canada um you know it was clear to anybody who was on the ground in ottawa as i testified

00:23:57.240 before the public inquiry in the fall of 2022, the Rouleau Commission, that none of the requirements

00:24:05.780 for the Emergencies Act to be invoked were present on Monday, February 14th, Valentine's Day in 2022.

00:24:15.380 The borders had all reopened, Windsor-Coutts, there was no protest there. The only protest left

00:24:20.740 in Canada was the significant protest in downtown Ottawa, which was causing tremendous embarrassment,

00:24:26.680 quite rightly, to the Trudeau government. And they invoked it to clear out that protest

00:24:33.140 tragically with brutal, tyrannical force against lawful protesting Canadians.

00:24:41.040 And it was clear to us that the legal test for the invocation wasn't met. We made public

00:24:46.040 statements live at the time that the legal test, there had to be threats of serious violence to

00:24:51.780 overthrow the government. That wasn't the case at all. So I was disappointed in the whole Rouleau

00:25:00.500 process. It turned out to be political theater, obviously. I was holding out hope that our federal

00:25:05.560 court would apply the law to the evidence and conclude the obvious that the legal test for

00:25:11.820 invocation of the Emergencies Act was not met. The actions of the Trudeau liberals in stripping

00:25:17.720 Canadians of their most basic rights and using violence against them was illegal. And that's

00:25:23.380 what the court has ruled today. I know it's difficult to concoct an argument on behalf of

00:25:29.240 the government, which I think has probably shown itself to not be particularly interested in

00:25:33.820 freedom. But we had the breaking news a few moments ago. Christopher Freeland says the

00:25:36.960 government will appeal this decision. Do you know, I mean, maybe it's premature, but do you suspect

00:25:42.940 what grounds they may use to do that? They'll be weak. That's a sign of desperation. The

00:25:52.420 decision's 120 pages long. I haven't had a chance to read it fully, but I understand the area of

00:25:59.480 law well. I understand the legal arguments well. I need to congratulate, you'll remember Brendan

00:26:05.540 Miller from the public inquiry, just so you know, this is his brilliant legal work in action. It

00:26:10.520 was Brendan Miller, who led the charge with some other lawyers on drafting and crafting this legal

00:26:16.420 argument and preparing the factum. So another tip of the hat to freedom fighter Brendan Miller.

00:26:22.520 So as we talk about the state of the Constitution here, I mean, the Emergencies Act itself is

00:26:28.400 relatively untested as a law. So this has precedential value for that. Do you think it

00:26:34.820 advances freedom of expression more broadly or or does it really just pull from what had already

00:26:40.580 been or was supposed to be the established approach to freedom of expression in canadian law

00:26:45.940 i don't know yet uh andrew because as you can appreciate this has happened so quickly and i

00:26:50.180 was in a meeting when it occurred and i had to rush back to my office to to prepare i know i

00:26:54.660 already had a show planned on something else so i understand i'm sympathetic to that yeah i made

00:26:59.460 some commitments to someone to have some deliverables up today i said unless something

00:27:02.740 big happens and little did i know um i don't know yet and i i will be happy to analyze that but what

00:27:08.660 i can say with certainty is that you know when the government is going to take these extraordinary

00:27:14.580 steps of arbitrarily freezing hundreds of canadians bank accounts and taking them out of the economy

00:27:21.620 and isolating them and you know the embarrassment of a mom with the kids at the grocery store and

00:27:27.060 the bags are packed and they got to leave an embarrassment without the food the the prescriptions

00:27:32.100 the mortgage payments and on and on that just we've all realized wow the government can do that

00:27:39.060 eh and the federal court has just said no actually they can't so uh at least not on such flimsy

00:27:47.080 grounds so everyone who's had their bank account frozen now has the legal right to sue the federal

00:27:53.520 government and i think that's very important i i was actually going to ask about the implications

00:27:58.380 of that so you're you believe that this opens up a liability path that didn't exist up before

00:28:03.600 absolutely and the reason for it is this the act not only empowered the government to take

00:28:10.520 extraordinary steps because you know there's an imminent insurrection and the enemy is within the

00:28:16.700 gate type stuff remember it was called the war measures act and it was only invoked previously in

00:28:21.100 world war one world war two and then the flq crisis where they were blowing things up killing

00:28:26.220 people and and kidnapping diplomats and even then it was seen as controversial and an overwrite by

00:28:31.560 a lot of people you know this was you know you know if the kids are listening i'm going to say

00:28:36.700 it bouncy castles you know and road hockey and people with canadian flags singing oh canada

00:28:42.420 uh so the the act empowered the government to take extraordinary measures against canadians

00:28:51.100 without due process of law, but it also protected the government with an immunity screen, a shield

00:28:59.220 for anything they did. Well, when their invocation order is collapsed for being illegal, struck down

00:29:06.560 by the courts for being unconstitutional, violation of the charter, that immunity screen's

00:29:13.040 gone too. That shield is gone. So the government's naked. They will bear the consequences

00:29:21.060 of their abhorrent and outrageous

00:29:23.480 and now clearly declared illegal actions

00:29:27.660 against thousands, tens of thousands

00:29:31.020 of lawful protesting Canadians.

00:29:34.300 So as we talk about the road forward here

00:29:37.880 and the federal government's going to appeal this,

00:29:40.440 we have this path that's opened up

00:29:42.540 for people to seek liability.

00:29:44.660 Do you believe that this,

00:29:46.980 because again, the fact that the federal government

00:29:48.680 is talking about appealing this

00:29:49.660 suggests that this decision standing as a warning shot against future overreach has not really

00:29:55.520 been heeded. They've fallen on deaf ears, has it not? Yeah, and the problem we've had is that

00:30:04.200 the courts, as I've talked about in other interviews and here, is that they've taken

00:30:08.260 judicial notice of things related to the pandemic that there was no evidence to support.

00:30:12.740 You know, the death data, Stats Canada confirmed, were completely exaggerated.

00:30:18.480 There was no evidence of safety and effectiveness of the vaccine because the clinical phase three trial hadn't been completed for some of them, still isn't complete.

00:30:27.340 And one of them was only just completed in December.

00:30:29.580 So this is the first time it appears to me that a court has taken a clear eyed examination of the evidence and the facts before it.

00:30:42.740 uh and clearly the circumstances that were going on in auto remember we had the the truckers had

00:30:48.460 negotiated with the mayor to de-escalate the pressure on the residential portions of the

00:30:53.360 downtown and move all the trucks and consolidate them up onto wellington where the grievance was

00:30:57.900 with the federal government and that movement was in progress when the emergency act was invoked

00:31:03.620 and i've said in the past that it was almost as though the government knew that its window was

00:31:07.600 closing because the footprint of the protest was shrinking they we i have some videos on my phone

00:31:15.200 that i played recently stumbled across where i was in our remote backup operation center downtown

00:31:22.240 during the raids and we we knew that they saw our move which was to de-escalate which would then take

00:31:29.520 away the justification for the emergencies act and that's why they rushed it in they rushed it in

00:31:35.760 because the prime minister was embarrassed that Canadians had stood up to his tyrannical behavior

00:31:42.960 and he wanted to punish them and he wanted to hurt them and he wanted to send a message that

00:31:48.960 this is the new authoritarian Canada in my view and you don't dare question me so he wanted to

00:31:54.480 move fast and that's why the evidence that came out was it was in part the federal government

00:31:59.200 that blocked further movements of trucks from us de-escalating and giving the protest more

00:32:05.440 permanence and staying power. So one thing I'll ask you here in closing, Keith, I mean, what are

00:32:12.380 you looking for in this decision? When you get a chance to go through it in a bit more detail,

00:32:16.960 what would you like to see there just as we talk about really securing freedom in the future?

00:32:23.080 I want to see whether what we all observed with our own eyes is reflected in the decision,

00:32:31.620 which is that this was a peaceful protest there was no interference with critical infrastructure

00:32:37.520 because there isn't critical infrastructure involving trade and borders in Ottawa and that

00:32:43.500 the justification just simply wasn't there I mean clearly the result of the decision is that's the

00:32:49.380 conclusion and so I'll be interested in looking at and also just there's there's two ways in which

00:32:57.000 the court can strike it down and it looks like they did both but i have to analyze the decision

00:33:01.960 more carefully one is on the basis that the legal test wasn't met so assume we had no charter of

00:33:06.960 rights and freedoms they have the ability to struck it down on the basis that the legal test

00:33:11.180 for invocation was not met they acted beyond their authority the cabinet did another way is

00:33:17.000 they met the legal test but they violated canadians charter rights in a way seizing bank

00:33:24.900 accounts, et cetera, that wasn't demonstrably justified section one in the free and democratic

00:33:30.400 society Oaks test. It appears from my cursory review of the decision, the 120 some pages that

00:33:36.560 they struck it on both. So I'm looking forward to seeing both, not so much the jurisdictional

00:33:41.280 analysis, because I think it's obvious, but more interesting to see the charter analysis.

00:33:46.360 Yeah, I think that will be fascinating as well. Once I get off air, I'll take a look as well.

00:33:50.200 But right now we're getting the reaction from our learned friends like yourself, Keith Wilson, Casey, always good to talk to you.

00:33:56.860 Thanks so much for coming on today.

00:33:58.800 Thank you, Andrew.

00:33:59.820 All right.

00:34:00.380 That was lawyer Keith Wilson continuing our live coverage and analysis of the federal court's decision today, a bombshell decision, one that is, as Keith Wilson says, relieving.

00:34:12.380 and as Christine Van Gein was saying was positively well I can't remember her exact

00:34:17.680 word but she was in a very good mood as she should have been about this we have just to

00:34:23.140 bring you up to speed here the decision that found the emergencies act was unconstitutional

00:34:27.660 and the measures invoked under it were so freezing bank accounts was illegal freezing

00:34:35.080 bank accounts conscripting tow truck drivers I believe was illegal we have the government's

00:34:41.880 declaration of illegalists of public assemblies as illegal, that was actually illegal. They were

00:34:47.280 breaking the law, not the people who are in Ottawa to protest as part of the Freedom Convoy, which

00:34:53.540 left Delta VC exactly two years ago, which means it was about two years less a month since the

00:34:59.080 Emergencies Act was put into play here. Conservative leader Pierre Polyev has reacted to this. He's

00:35:05.080 actually shared a screenshot from a True North story. I think we might have been the first out

00:35:09.320 the gate here. What Pierre Polyev writes is, Judge Rules Trudeau broke the highest law in the land

00:35:17.340 with the Emergencies Act. He caused the crisis by dividing people. Then he violated charter rights

00:35:23.240 to illegally suppress citizens. As Prime Minister, I will unite our country for freedom. And then he

00:35:29.580 links to a petition to fire Trudeau and unite for freedom. Pierre Polyev's comment there,

00:35:35.000 Judge rules Trudeau broke the highest law on the land.

00:35:38.020 And he reiterates a point he's made in the past,

00:35:40.760 which is that Trudeau caused the crisis that led to that protest.

00:35:44.960 So that was quite massive here.

00:35:46.820 Now, Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland did comment.

00:35:49.420 The Liberal cabinet right now has been assembled in Montreal,

00:35:53.100 where they had a retreat earlier this week, which wrapped up today.

00:35:57.760 But all of the ministers went into, literally, I saw a tweet from,

00:36:01.220 I think it was Marika Walsh, if I can find it here, with the Globe and Mail.

00:36:04.400 that major news that has disrupted the PM's cabinet retreat.

00:36:08.020 Journalists were expecting several scrums on other issues.

00:36:11.020 All were just postponed.

00:36:12.560 So they like sent the ministers into hiding.

00:36:14.700 But Chrystia Freeland decided to make an appearance.

00:36:17.280 She was not preoccupied with Disney+.

00:36:19.420 She canceled her subscription to deal with inflation.

00:36:22.000 But she had this to say about the federal court decision.

00:36:26.460 We are aware of the court decision.

00:36:30.180 We have discussed it with the prime minister.

00:36:33.480 with cabinet colleagues, with senior federal government officials and experts.

00:36:41.380 We respect very much Canada's independent judiciary.

00:36:49.000 However, we do not agree with this decision,

00:36:56.220 and respectfully, we will be appealing it.

00:37:01.160 I would just like to take a moment to remind Canadians of how serious the situation was in our country when we took that decision.

00:37:15.160 The public safety of Canadians was under threat.

00:37:22.620 Our national security, which includes our national economic security, was under threat.

00:37:30.000 It was a hard decision to take. We took it very seriously after a lot of hard work, after a lot

00:37:41.080 of careful deliberation. We were convinced at the time, I was convinced at the time, it was the

00:37:49.600 right thing to do. It was the necessary thing to do. I remain and we remain convinced of that.

00:38:02.600 I remain and we remain convinced it was the best thing to do. So it doesn't matter that

00:38:08.500 it's unconstitutional because Chrystia Freeland's happy with it. And isn't that what the law is

00:38:12.980 supposed to be in this country? As long as Chrystia Freeland can sleep at night, the law

00:38:18.140 and constitution and rule of law and due process do not matter.

00:38:23.480 Sorry, Gladys, your bank account got frozen.

00:38:26.600 Sorry there, Carlos.

00:38:28.080 We know you have to, you know, go against your will

00:38:32.560 to tow that truck that you support out of the way.

00:38:36.180 But fear not, because Chrystia Freeland's happy.

00:38:39.840 Chrystia Freeland's happy.

00:38:41.160 She's like the wicked witch of the banking system or something.

00:38:43.900 Like, she's just out there cackling and giddy and saying,

00:38:46.540 ah, my pretties, I've frozen your accounts. Like this is absolutely brazen. But this government

00:38:52.760 has gone all in. This government has gone all in on the suppression of your right to free speech,

00:38:59.660 your right to banking, your right to due process. So absolutely, why should the government care

00:39:04.580 about the court decision? And it's hilarious. It's not. But I'm going to tell you something

00:39:09.820 that's amusing anyway. This is a liberal party and a liberal government that over the last

00:39:15.660 several weeks, months, and quite frankly, over the next several years, will be making these

00:39:21.700 incessant comparisons between, oh, Pierre Polyev is like Trump. He's Trump-like. You know what

00:39:28.060 Trump never did? Trump never froze the bank accounts of his critics. Trump never did anything

00:39:34.300 of the sort. Trump may have fired some verbal pot shots at his critics. Trump certainly had a

00:39:39.640 terrible choice of character of those around him. But Trump never did what Justin Trudeau did

00:39:44.820 about his political dissidents and what Christopher Freeland is standing up and unrepentantly

00:39:49.980 defending, even with this court finding that it was unconstitutional. So this is going to get worse.

00:39:58.560 And the federal government, as you heard there, has reviewed this. They've managed to just go

00:40:03.060 through 190 pages in nothing flat, in no time whatsoever. And they've already decided they have

00:40:09.320 an argument to appeal without even, I mean, the ink isn't even dry on the federal court's decision

00:40:14.460 And the federal government has somehow found a way to make this a case that they're going to appeal.

00:40:19.520 So this, to me, is only going to inflame further right now.

00:40:25.040 And exactly, look, to give the government a little bit of credit here,

00:40:28.860 there were some instances of very violent, raucous behavior in the convoy.

00:40:35.120 I captured one of them when I was there.

00:40:44.460 I mean, literally horrific, horrific stuff.

00:40:59.820 You do not know who is going to get injured when you jump on ice.

00:41:04.320 And you also had people sharing, again, to give the government some credit,

00:41:08.420 people sharing hate symbols with abandon.

00:41:11.320 This was the sight that awaited me when I arrived in Ottawa

00:41:13.800 the very first weekend of the convoy to report on it.

00:41:37.760 Yeah, so there was, it's subtle, you might have missed it,

00:41:40.680 but there were like, you know, 90 or a hundred of these hate symbols.

00:41:43.880 It's like a rectangle that has these two red bars on the side.

00:41:48.340 And in the middle is this like pointy, it almost looks like a tree or a leaf.

00:41:53.240 But that is a, yeah, Sean says it's a leaf, it's a leaf, not a tree.

00:41:57.220 That is in and of itself a hate symbol in Justin Trudeau's Canada.

00:42:00.840 So we can't have people waving Canadian flags.

00:42:03.200 We can't have people that are dancing in the streets.

00:42:05.580 We can't have people.

00:42:06.660 One person tried to serve me a chicken wing.

00:42:08.740 Do you realize how much chickens have to suffer?

00:42:11.460 I mean, if that's not a public emergency,

00:42:13.580 I mean, especially when I'm eating chicken wings,

00:42:15.100 a lot of chickens have to suffer.

00:42:16.540 That is generally why anyone that doesn't

00:42:18.700 all you can eat wing night loses when I show up.

00:42:20.560 But this is what the federal government says

00:42:22.960 was it's emergency.

00:42:24.480 Now, when you listen to what Chrystia Freeland says

00:42:27.880 in that clip, which I won't force you to go through again,

00:42:32.000 she does something that is very, I'll say dangerous

00:42:34.700 because she makes up the law.

00:42:36.400 he talks about how Canada's economic security was under threat. I have read the Emergencies Act

00:42:43.980 many, many, many times. I have read the Emergencies Act and it does not make a reference to economic

00:42:52.240 security. It does not make a reference to it. So the federal government tried to talk about war

00:42:57.480 and insurrection and unrest in the same context as some trucks were held up at the border.

00:43:05.560 Now, admittedly, I think the border blockades were wrong.

00:43:08.880 And the border blockades were dealt with using regular powers.

00:43:13.560 They were dealt with using regular powers.

00:43:16.940 So when the federal government, and Chrystia Freeland is still holding to this,

00:43:20.620 says that this was a case of economic security warranting a national emergency,

00:43:25.740 this is her literally making up the law.

00:43:29.240 There is no justification in the Emergencies Act to use economic harm

00:43:33.120 as being a threat to the security of Canada

00:43:36.500 that rises to the point

00:43:38.660 of what the government says was a national emergency.

00:43:42.820 And I see one of my old Twitter threads on this

00:43:45.600 is recirculating now.

00:43:47.100 And I think I had some good stuff here

00:43:48.660 that I want to pull up

00:43:49.520 because what the federal government said here

00:43:52.040 is that there was a threat to the security of Canada,

00:43:54.860 which is very clearly defined,

00:43:56.160 it's not subjective, in the Canadian law.

00:43:59.560 And they defined a public order emergency,

00:44:02.320 which has a very specific definition.

00:44:04.340 It requires a national emergency

00:44:05.800 and it requires all of these other criteria,

00:44:08.400 which I went through

00:44:09.220 during the Public Order Emergency Commission

00:44:11.040 and I painstakingly parsed for people

00:44:13.560 and I'm reading through it now.

00:44:15.860 The Emergencies Act requires

00:44:17.420 for a public order emergency,

00:44:19.380 a threat to the security of Canada,

00:44:21.840 which is defined by the CSIS Act,

00:44:25.040 specifically section two.

00:44:27.300 You go to the CSIS Act

00:44:28.540 and its definition of a threat

00:44:30.320 to the security of Canada

00:44:31.440 is activities that are used that were creating threats to serious violence against persons or

00:44:38.460 property. And that was the section that they pulled up here, 2C. And then even if that were

00:44:45.400 there, which it wasn't, but even if that were there, it must rise to a threshold where it

00:44:50.620 seriously endangers the lives, health or safety as Canadians and exceeds the capacity of a province

00:44:57.040 to deal with. That criterion was not met. And it's why the Emergencies Act was not used in response

00:45:03.800 to 9-11, floods, ice storms, the OCOS standoff, and the COVID pandemic. So this is where what

00:45:11.380 the government did was moon, it was just manifest, it was improv. The government was doing improvisation

00:45:17.700 here to try to find a way to justify this emergency. And look, the Public Order Emergency

00:45:23.400 Commission was an exhaustive process. And I think it was a fair process, even if I disagreed with

00:45:28.700 the outcome of it. But it did not have a binding effect on the government. It produced, I think it

00:45:34.060 was like a 5,000 page report. And at the end of that report, the federal government said, okay,

00:45:38.660 we're vindicated. And it's funny that now the federal government is doing the opposite with

00:45:43.060 a court decision, a court decision, which is binding, which is more influential, which does

00:45:48.540 have precedential power and authority that will bind and I would say hopefully constrain future

00:45:54.200 governments. So if the federal government chooses to disregard this, it will completely embolden

00:46:00.280 what was the very attitude behind the Freedom Convoy, which is that we must take a stand

00:46:05.080 against a government that is thumbing its nose at our freedoms, at our rights, and at our civil

00:46:10.900 liberties. So I cannot overstate how big a day this is. And yes, this is going to go on for years.

00:46:18.100 This is going to go before the federal court of appeal, regardless of the federal court of appeals decision, it's going to eventually go to the Supreme Court. So I know this is going to be a long standing process that we will all have to contend with. But let me just first, because I was going to talk about the liberal government's polling in free fall here. And I actually think there's a clip that is worth sharing here from Justin Trudeau, because Justin Trudeau was speaking in Montreal to reporters about, oh, well, you know, governments need a plan.

00:46:48.100 Yeah. And he was trying to sort of defend how his government has a road forward in this period.

00:46:54.360 Take a look. We know we're in challenging times right now in the world, and that's why it's so important that we have a government that continues to roll up its sleeves and take responsible, serious, steady decisions as we're there to support Canadians now and to build a strong and prosperous future.

00:47:13.620 We know the Conservative Party continues to offer only insults and attacks on one side

00:47:19.820 and cuts to programs that Canadians rely on on the other side.

00:47:23.480 That's not what Canadians need.

00:47:25.300 Canadians need a government with a plan, with the capacity and the ability to continue to deliver,

00:47:32.120 even in these complex, challenging times, and that's exactly what we're doing.

00:47:37.280 2024 is going to continue to be a challenging year,

00:47:39.800 but we're also going to see a number of bright spots as we come through the challenges of the past few years

00:47:46.580 and Canada positions itself with all the advantages we have to lead the way on many, many different fronts

00:47:54.040 at a time where the world is facing real issues and difficulties as well.

00:47:59.120 One thing that we always remember is that Canada is the best country in the world

00:48:03.780 and it's up to us to work hard to make it even better.

00:48:06.740 And that's exactly what we're gathered here in my hometown to do.

00:48:12.560 I mean, admittedly, that was a couple of hours before the bombshell that his government was given this incredible rebuke by the federal court.

00:48:22.260 But he was saying that, I mean, again, the liberals are, I think, 17 points behind the conservatives in the most recent poll I saw from Abacus, which was about last week or so.

00:48:31.940 the interesting thing here is that the federal government has been incredibly disconnected

00:48:40.660 from real Canadians for quite some time. We see this on inflation. We see this on, I think,

00:48:48.720 general cost of living issues, housing, immigration, all of these things where the government is not

00:48:55.120 actually in lockstep with anyone but its own priorities. And even then it's unclear what

00:49:00.240 its priorities are. And then you have a government that has chosen to go all in on very strange

00:49:06.400 things. A government that's chosen to go all in on the gender ideology stuff that triggered

00:49:11.400 parental rights protests, a government that went all in on COVID restrictions, even when people

00:49:16.020 were really souring on them. Remember the trucker vaccine mandate, which really started the convoy

00:49:21.980 protest, that came about when places around the world were easing restrictions. That came about

00:49:29.440 where I think it was the United Kingdom was saying, yeah, you know what? Masks are gone.

00:49:33.180 Border entry requirements, vaccine mandates are all gone. The UK, which had some insanely

00:49:37.240 restrictive measures, they were lifting them. European countries were lifting them. And in

00:49:42.500 Canada, Justin Trudeau was campaigning on them and then layering on more and more restrictions

00:49:47.460 because heaven help us if we have to deal with the menace of someone in a truck alone,

00:49:52.540 crossing the border into Canada without getting a vaccine. I mean, we see this and we so

00:49:59.420 the vindictive rhetoric from the government, the punitive rhetoric. Justin Trudeau famously

00:50:05.980 at that rally in Calgary during the campaign, shouting, his voice straining as he says,

00:50:10.860 you don't have to get vaccinated, but you don't have a right to get on a plane or a train and

00:50:15.720 put people in danger. And he was getting, this was an applause line for him. So all of this leads to

00:50:22.580 the Freedom Convoy, which a protest that you may or may not like. And I understand it. The longer

00:50:30.480 it went on, even a lot of people who were enthused and celebratory at the beginning said, okay,

00:50:35.360 you've made your point, time to go home. You can have that decision. You can have that approach.

00:50:40.740 That's your choice. But the point that I've stressed in my coverage of this going back two

00:50:45.800 years now is that you didn't have to support the Freedom Convoy to realize that the federal

00:50:51.800 government took an incredibly heavy-handed approach to getting rid of it, invoking this

00:50:56.660 law that has never before been used. And then within that law, using that law of justification

00:51:03.240 uses insane measures. Again, we're talking about the freezing of people's bank accounts.

00:51:11.160 The freezing of people's bank accounts. Like that alone has made Canada the embarrassment of the

00:51:18.500 world. That alone was given the condemnation of people, again, around the world, of European

00:51:26.520 members of parliament, of foreign heads of government even. And this was something that

00:51:31.340 the government still defends as necessary. There's been no contrition. There's not even been a sense

00:51:36.900 of, you know, yes, I concede we could have more, I mean, not that this would have made a difference,

00:51:42.180 but Christopher Freeland said, you know what, we wrote it quickly. We could have done it more

00:51:46.080 narrowly because people forget that the federal government only froze a relatively small number

00:51:51.720 of people's bank accounts. And I'm not defending it. I'm not excusing it, but it wasn't thousands.

00:51:55.900 It wasn't like anyone who donated got their account frozen. But under the way the regulations

00:52:01.260 were written, pretty much anyone could have. If you so much as handed a cup of coffee to a trucker

00:52:07.340 that was pulled over on the side of a highway at some rest stop, you could have been under the law

00:52:12.920 subject to having your bank account frozen.

00:52:16.560 It was about, I can't remember the exact wording now,

00:52:19.100 but it was about providing support.

00:52:21.160 And the government had no restrictions or constraints on that.

00:52:25.700 The government's only constraint was that it didn't happen to do it.

00:52:30.520 So this was a very heavy-handed approach

00:52:32.360 that should make everyone very nervous.

00:52:34.580 Now, Tom Marazzo was in the thick of this.

00:52:37.620 He had his accounts frozen.

00:52:39.260 The Emergencies Act justified the freezing of his accounts,

00:52:42.600 his ex-wife was affected. His ability to buy medication for his child with special needs

00:52:48.520 was affected. Tom Marazzo was on the show recently about something else. He joins me again now.

00:52:54.000 Tom, it's good to have you on here. Obviously a big day. I'm curious how you feel as one of these

00:52:59.600 people that has effectively been very directly vindicated by this decision. Well, I feel actually

00:53:06.200 really as excited as everybody else that I've seen on social media this morning, or sorry,

00:53:11.900 this afternoon already everybody's quite excited and um but i want to sort of temper that with the

00:53:18.860 fact that um they've already announced that they are going to appeal uh which is you know as to be

00:53:25.340 expected with the the level of hubris that we've come to know and love from this particular

00:53:31.020 government uh this is just one more scandal for the liberal government i'm sure that they're going

00:53:36.860 to do everything in their power to get themselves out of so you know they've agreed to appeal it

00:53:42.460 um but you know i i still feel pretty good about this and i was just trying to go through some of

00:53:48.940 the wording myself right now uh reading the document uh it's 190 pages so there's a lot to

00:53:55.340 digest but yeah this is the story of every guest who's been on we should have just assigned we

00:53:59.340 should have just assigned everyone like 20 pages so that when they all come on we get the full

00:54:03.580 picture by the end of the show yes but it's it's really it is good news for canadians and uh you

00:54:09.500 can see that i mean there's a there's a really good buzz on social media right now and rightly

00:54:15.180 so it's justified you know this is all stuff that was obvious to us even before justin trudeau

00:54:21.900 invoked the emergencies act so to see you know almost two years you know the anniversary of the

00:54:27.980 convoy going to Ottawa, we're seeing now finally this vindication, I think. And I feel good about

00:54:36.340 this because, you know, one, it says that maybe there is a chance that the courts in Canada are

00:54:43.260 actually functioning properly or as the citizenry of this country would expect, you know, yet to be

00:54:49.980 determined in the next round of court decisions, I'm sure. But it is good. It is a positive thing

00:54:55.940 to see an actual judge applying the law and not just going to something

00:55:00.120 like judicial notice or something and, you know,

00:55:02.600 trying to wash this thing all under the rug.

00:55:05.540 So that's very positive.

00:55:08.660 But, you know, to go back to your point about the bank accounts and stuff,

00:55:12.500 and I think that's a very important part of this is that, you know,

00:55:16.700 I've said this many times in interviews before that, you know,

00:55:20.540 I was never charged, I was never convicted,

00:55:23.660 yet they went right to punitive actions where my bank accounts were frozen and many other

00:55:28.440 bank accounts were frozen but gets even a little bit worse and excuse the appearance

00:55:33.120 I was just excited to be able to talk about this but there is a special list of people I believe

00:55:40.740 about 41 people that the police investigated in this list of people actually went around the

00:55:46.560 entire planet the bank of china india wall street bay street bank of india went around the world

00:55:54.480 the government said if you're doing business with these 41 individuals stop doing business with them

00:55:59.820 right now so that's yet one more layer of overreach that the government of canada you know

00:56:05.900 imposed on canadian citizens who had not been arrested or convicted of a crime

00:56:10.560 the banking aspect is crucial here and i know i mentioned it a little bit in my my introduction

00:56:16.680 of you but i was wondering just to bring people up to speed who might not be as familiar with

00:56:20.120 your story or who might have forgotten what happened and when did you learn for the first

00:56:25.220 time that you had been swept up in this uh i think it was uh probably about a day or two after the

00:56:35.120 they invoked the emergencies act and i you know i was um my ex-spouse was trying to access bank

00:56:42.400 accounts and couldn't um you know in my particular case i wasn't really spending any money while i

00:56:50.160 was there so i wasn't i that's not something i was monitoring or expecting but i was certainly

00:56:55.040 feeling the heat from home that uh all of the financial assets that we had were frozen and i

00:57:01.520 I mean, everything.

00:57:03.280 And no one ever gave you a call or sent you an email.

00:57:05.800 It was just you go to spend money and you can't.

00:57:08.160 Yes.

00:57:08.380 And we heard that lie being told repeatedly at the Public Order Emergency Commission that,

00:57:13.200 you know, people were being notified that if they didn't, their accounts were frozen

00:57:17.240 or when they were frozen, they were notified.

00:57:19.820 I've never spoken to a single person that was notified that their bank accounts or financial

00:57:25.020 assets were frozen.

00:57:26.180 I've never heard that at all.

00:57:28.940 Not once.

00:57:29.580 And just to point, you raised this, but it's such a crucial point here that you were not, because again, if someone is charged with a crime, certainly if someone's convicted with a crime, that goes along with losing bits of your liberty. We accept that as a society. If someone's charged with a crime, there are certain circumstances where maybe some measures are appropriate, like pretrial incarceration, although as we've seen with your colleagues, Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, that can be abused in the case of Tamara.

00:57:57.220 but what you had was a punishment without any charge so you could never beat the rap I mean

00:58:05.340 you could never really challenge this or appeal this as I understand it the only recourse was

00:58:10.840 when the banks just decided to stop freezing your account yes and of course nobody ever said that

00:58:16.300 the bank accounts had been reinstated either I was checking every 30 minutes to see if my account had

00:58:22.520 come back online after I was already back home when the convoy was concluded rather violently

00:58:29.260 by the police. So again, you know, they went right to the punishment phase of this.

00:58:36.200 So we had Keith Wilson on the show a little while ago, and he had said something that I found quite

00:58:42.180 interesting, that with this decision from the federal government or from the federal court,

00:58:46.980 people who had their accounts frozen now have legal recourse open to them to do this. I know

00:58:53.000 it's early, but is that something that you will look into availing yourself of? Yes, I absolutely

00:58:58.160 will be looking at that. I have discussed that with Keith and I've also discussed that with

00:59:03.400 Brendan Miller. Brendan Miller, as you remember, was the head litigator that we had during the

00:59:09.240 commission. He was also one of the original lawyers that was part of the judicial review

00:59:14.940 for the decision that we're hearing today so it was kind of his strategy um for the judicial review

00:59:21.420 which is the reason why brendan miller became the head litigator for the public order emergency

00:59:27.180 commission because he was on both this current decision and also uh was on the public order

00:59:32.860 emergency commission as our our head lawyer so i have been in discussions with them uh to see what

00:59:39.180 recourse that i may have available to me uh unfortunately you know in my particular case

00:59:45.100 finance is going to be an issue if if i do seek some sort of remedy from the federal government

00:59:51.500 um but one thing i do want to contrast this to because you know i wrote about this extensively

00:59:57.500 in one of the chapters in my book uh because some of the comparisons that the cbc just wrote today

01:00:03.100 about the commission versus this judicial review decision um you know they they compared this to

01:00:10.060 rouleau's decision and tried to kind of give him a little bit of leeway or an out um but the fact

01:00:16.780 remains that rouleau himself in the commission i was sitting in the audience when he did this

01:00:23.660 he was he actually admonished one of the lawyers uh during a jccf lawyer for his cross-examination

01:00:31.020 of the CSIS director and Rouleau himself in the commission admitted that CSIS did not or that the

01:00:38.940 government did not meet any of the four conditions of CSIS section two he admitted in court and then

01:00:44.300 he came out and he said you know the government met the very high threshold which is why you know

01:00:49.900 there was so much anger about the decision of the commission but now we're seeing a different judge

01:00:55.800 looking at different facts and coming out with a completely different conclusion. Now, this whole

01:01:01.020 decision, the federal government has said they are going to appeal. So it will go to the federal

01:01:07.480 court of appeal. And I hope that it's upheld at that appeal level, because if it goes to the

01:01:14.220 Supreme Court, don't forget, we've got the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, which is Wagner,

01:01:19.460 who during the actual protest went into the media and spoke out against the convoy so now we're in

01:01:28.860 a situation where if this goes to the supreme court we've got a chief justice who is going to

01:01:33.520 have to recuse himself from hearing any matters related to the convoy yeah i wouldn't hold i

01:01:39.480 wouldn't hold my breath for him realizing that but i i recall and i can't remember the exact word but

01:01:44.320 he I think used it I think it was siege he referred to Ottawa as being under siege or it was some

01:01:49.400 some similar term about that yeah and I said at the time how on earth can this guy ever adjudicate

01:01:53.940 any case about this but I again let's we'll cross that bridge when we get to it uh Tom I'll say

01:02:00.320 congratulations I know you weren't in this action directly but I think you're certainly one of the

01:02:04.300 beneficiaries of this decision so it's good to talk to you thanks so much for coming on thanks

01:02:08.840 Andrew thank you very much thank you that was Tom Marazzo I want to go immediately to Eddie

01:02:13.900 Cornell, who was one of the applicants in this case. Eddie Cornell is on the board of Veterans

01:02:19.380 for Freedom, and Eddie Cornell looks like the right half of my show logo right now for some

01:02:24.600 reason. So I don't know if that's just, there we go. So we'll bring in Eddie Cornell on this.

01:02:30.740 Eddie, good to talk to you. Thanks very much for coming on. And also thank you very much,

01:02:35.040 sir, for your service to this country. What was your role in this case, first and foremost?

01:02:40.420 Well, I was one of the litigants, as in the case itself, myself and Vincent Gercees were given standing as we were directly affected having our bank accounts frozen during the emergency act.

01:02:55.400 So the judge recognized that both of us were harmed during that type of action, as well as many other Canadians.

01:03:03.560 But both of us were given the standing and came up with a positive decision today.

01:03:08.200 I think that's an important point here.

01:03:10.280 I spoke at the beginning of the show with Christine Van Gein from the Canadian Constitution Foundation, and for groups like hers and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, they have a very, I'll say it's a very academic investment in this case, whereas for you, this was personal.

01:03:23.720 You were literally prevented from doing something as fundamental as banking because you had tied yourself to this protest.

01:03:30.520 Now, look, a lot of people may not have seen you or heard of you before.

01:03:34.160 You weren't one of the most prominent people here that were seen like Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.

01:03:39.560 So why were you targeted, do you think?

01:03:42.580 Well, I did speak out quite a bit, and I was one of the people that called veterans to come to Ottawa.

01:03:48.320 So, you know, I guess that placed a target on my back.

01:03:52.340 You know, I was visible in that regard.

01:03:54.680 And, you know, I worked directly with Tom and others during that convoy to support the truckers.

01:04:01.180 You know, it was pretty disturbing that, you know, you have everything frozen.

01:04:07.140 you know it's minus 25 in ottawa you can't get gas your vehicle you can't buy food you have

01:04:13.000 nowhere to stay and you can't get home i live in new brunswick so it was uh pretty difficult if it

01:04:17.880 really wasn't for the kindness of others i wouldn't have been able to make it back here

01:04:21.560 what was it that got you involved in this in the first place

01:04:27.320 well you know i've been speaking out about what the government was doing during covid uh quite a

01:04:34.240 bit. And when I saw the truckers come forward, I just knew that I had to be there to support them

01:04:40.260 in any way that I could. And I think that was probably one of the best times of my life in

01:04:46.300 this country, to see the unity across the country and stand up to draconian measures that, you know,

01:04:53.100 the government imposed over the course of the COVID pandemic. And to see the reaction,

01:05:00.660 And, you know, of people when Canadians stood up and said, hey, this is it.

01:05:06.540 This is enough.

01:05:07.260 We're not doing this.

01:05:08.640 I knew I had to be part of it.

01:05:10.740 Keith Wilson earlier, the lawyer who at one point represented the convoy, had said, and I was just chatting about this with Tom,

01:05:17.220 that anyone who had their bank accounts frozen or was targeted under the Emergencies Act measures now has some recourse available.

01:05:24.700 Because we have this legal ruling that you could use to go after the government.

01:05:28.900 And I wanted to ask you, first off, if you intend to do that, but also what would make you whole?

01:05:33.900 I mean, the government, you know, they've unfrozen the bank accounts.

01:05:37.600 What could they do, if anything, that would rectify that to you?

01:05:42.080 You know, I'm really kind of looking at all my options at this point.

01:05:46.140 I haven't made a decision moving forward what's going to happen.

01:05:50.480 I'll be consulting with my legal team and make some decisions very soon.

01:05:55.800 And I'll go from there.

01:05:57.260 I think that I don't want to, you know, speak hastily and say something that could counter any possible win that I might have in the future in regards to this.

01:06:09.080 So, like I say, for now, I think I'll just kind of keep a close eye on this decision.

01:06:15.720 I know that Christy Freeland has come forward and said the government will appeal.

01:06:19.640 So I'll speak to my legal team and see what options we have.

01:06:23.180 you served your country for decades in uniform did you ever imagine you would end up having to

01:06:30.940 sue that same country no that would be the furthest thing from my mind i never thought

01:06:37.700 that i could see our government turn on the canadian people and also turn on veterans who

01:06:45.740 were standing in support of truckers with medals on and be beaten into submission and thrown out

01:06:53.160 out like yesterday's garbage out in the middle of nowhere after they drove them around for a couple

01:06:58.880 of hours and process them and just dump them off in the middle of nowhere it's disgusting

01:07:03.800 and they should yeah and i mean you had joined uh the military it was in 1975 do i i have that

01:07:09.800 correct yeah so this was five years after the flq crisis when the war measures act had been

01:07:15.560 invoked to deal with this very controversially and i'm guessing that even by the time you enlisted

01:07:20.440 That would have loomed large on why, you know, the using war measures in a domestic capacity for law enforcement was not acceptable.

01:07:28.280 So you fast forward and then see the emergencies that come into place.

01:07:31.940 And I think that's why so many veterans were just absolutely shocked and dismayed by this.

01:07:37.160 That's a good point. I really believe that, you know, veterans recognize probably more so than most people how, you know, a government can abuse its power.

01:07:48.600 And that's why veterans came to Ottawa and stood up.

01:07:51.320 Like, we don't speak for, I'm part of B4F, one of the founders of B4F.

01:07:55.460 And, you know, we don't speak for all the veterans, but the ones that did come and supported the trucker convoy,

01:08:00.060 they were the people that recognized that this government is overreaching.

01:08:04.780 And, you know, they were basically power drunk and wanted to squash any dissension from the public.

01:08:13.240 and they would go to any length

01:08:15.040 to quell people from speaking out.

01:08:19.280 All right.

01:08:20.020 Well, I appreciate very much your service

01:08:21.940 and I'm glad you were a part of this case.

01:08:24.400 It's a very important case

01:08:25.680 and you've certainly cemented your name

01:08:27.600 in the history books here.

01:08:28.620 Not that that was your intention,

01:08:30.060 but congratulations on the win, Eddie.

01:08:31.700 And thank you so much for joining us on such short notice.

01:08:34.640 Thanks, Eddie. My pleasure.

01:08:36.240 Eddie Cornell, one of the applicants

01:08:37.760 in the now successful fight in the federal court

01:08:41.620 against the federal government's invocation

01:08:43.520 of the Emergencies Act.

01:08:45.020 We could probably do this all day.

01:08:46.460 We're going to call it here.

01:08:47.320 I've got to actually read the decision in full

01:08:49.320 and we'll have a bit more of an academic

01:08:51.840 and legal analysis on the show tomorrow.

01:08:54.040 But I wanted to bring you some early reflections

01:08:56.400 and reactions to what was going on here.

01:08:58.980 That's all coming up tomorrow

01:09:00.480 on The Andrew Lawton Show,

01:09:01.900 Canada's most irreverent talk show here on True North.

01:09:04.800 Thank you, God bless, and good day to you all.

01:09:08.160 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

01:09:10.240 Support the program by donating to True North at www.tnc.news.

01:09:40.240 We'll be right back.

01:10:10.240 We'll be right back.

01:10:40.240 We'll be right back.

Juno News - January 23, 2024

Federal Court declares use of Emergencies Act UNCONSTITUTIONAL

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