The Canadian government announced Friday it would file an appeal of a Federal Court judgement that found it acted illegally when responding to Freedom Convoy protests in 2022. That judgement held that the government’s invocation of the federal Emergencies Act in response to the protests exceeded its authority and violated some protesters’ constitutional rights.
Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, Public Safety Minister Dominic LeBlanc and Justice Minister Arif Virani announced their appeal of the decision in a televised speech. During the announcement, Freeland stated that the government respects Canada’s “independent judiciary,” but that the government still planned to appeal the decision. “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,” Freeland said. “The public safety of Canadians was under threat, our national security, which includes national economic security, was under threat.”
The Emergencies Act was invoked in February 2022 by the government in an attempt to control the Freedom Convoy protests, which were convened to oppose parliament’s COVID-19 vaccination requirements. The convoy brought Ottawa to a standstill for a period of three weeks. The Act provides that the Canadian government has the power to forbid certain protests, ban travel to or from a specific area and limit “the use of specified property” if there is enough evidence of a “public order emergency.”
A case was then brought by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the Canadian Constitution Foundation, as well as other individuals in opposition to the use of this Act. The court found that the protests in question did not fill the criteria in order to constitute a public order emergency, as they “did not constitute threats or the use of serious violence to persons or property.” Furthermore, the court ruled that the government violated protesters’ freedom of expression given that the measures put through the Emergencies Act invocation criminalized participation “in a public assembly that may reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace.”
If the appeal is accepted, the case will be heard again in the Federal Court of Appeal.
