By Melvin Frohike

Despite the best efforts from some quarters of Canadian society to move on from the watershed days of February 2022, many Canadians will still remember that odious time as a crossroads—a series of directed events making many question that long-held historical myth of a kinder, gentler Canadian society—even affectionately called the Peaceable Kingdom. In sharp contrast to that mythology, images of lines of black-clad police advancing with batons drawn (and nameplates removed) on Canadians protesting government overreach and of police snipers slinking along rooftops in the nation’s capital remain etched on our collective psyche.

Into that dark recollection, enter two organizations—supported by an untold number of average Canadians—committed to holding the government accountable for their overreach.

We can confidently characterize the government’s decisions in the winter of 2022 as overreach because of a 2023 Federal Court decision from the bench of Justice Mosley. That decision called the Liberals’ use of the Emergencies Act (formerly the War Measures Act) “illegal and unconstitutional.” The Federal Court found that there was no national emergency and no threat to Canada’s security.

The Court also found that the government’s freezing of bank accounts and restrictions on protests violated constitutional rights regarding unreasonable searches and seizures and the fundamental right to Freedom of Expression.

The decision was and remains a splattered egg on the face of the Trudeau government. In response to the Court’s repudiation of their actions in its decision, the government hastily called a presser and indicated they would be appealing. So hasty was the announcement that many observers wondered how the government had found time to review the 190-page decision before deciding to appeal it.

The Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF), an Alberta-based charity involved in defending the constitutionally-protected rights and freedoms of Canadians, and maintaining the Canadian constitution, recently filed in support of their legal challenge to the government’s motion to appeal Justice Mosley’s decision. That appeal is expected to be heard in early 2025. Anyone interested in supporting the CCF’s effort at restraining government overreach, can visit theccf.ca.

In another encouraging example of ordinary people taking the government to task for the unprecedented violations

of their constitutional rights under the cover of Covid, the Institute for Freedom and Justice (IFJ) is taking the fight to the government in a lawsuit targeting the federal vaccine travel ban. This 3-year fight is currently also on appeal.

In the initial decision, the Federal Court judge essentially determined that the court would not consider the ramifications of the travel ban on unvaccinated Canadians’ constitutional right to freedom of movement because the ban had been repealed by the time the case went to trial and thus was “moot.”  The Judge further determined that there was no public interest to be served by allocating judicial resources to hear moot applications. You might think that a government travel ban potentially impinging the constitutional rights of six million people would be worth the resources. You would, apparently, be mistaken.

A highlight of the initial proceeding in the travel ban case was information uncovered during a two-month cross-examination of the government’s expert witnesses, who confirmed that they could not find any science to justify or support Trudeau’s vaccine travel mandates. They went ahead anyhow. That cross-examination provided appalling insight into the sheer randomness of government decision-making processes used during Covid. In the black box model of decision-making familiar to students of political science, it appears zero inputs resulted in draconian output.

The latest round of IFJ’s battle with the government will take place on November 18th, 2024, at the Federal Court in Toronto, where IFJ will defend against the government’s attempt to strike down the lawsuit on what appear to be technicalities. Rarely a good look for a sitting government in a democracy. A full breakdown of the case, including information on how you can support can be found at freedomandjustice.ca

We should all be grateful for organizations and people willing to charge into the breach and fight when others want to look away and forget. It is a modern David versus Goliath playing out in our courts. I take heart because we know what happened in the original version.

Both cases show us that the other national mythology—Canadians who are tenacious, just, strong, free, and who have a kind exterior that belies a forged steel within—may not be a myth after all.