Justice Richard Mosley sided with the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and Canadian Constitutional Foundation, both of which argued that the federal government had infringed upon citizens' charter rights via the controversial decision to invoke the Act.
"It is declared that the decision to issue the Proclamation and the associated Regulations and Order was unreasonable and ultra vires the Emergencies Act," the ruling stated.
"It is declared that the Regulations infringed section 2(b) of the Charter and declared that the Order infringed section 8 of the Charter and that neither infringement was justified under section 1."
The Charter rights in question involve freedom of expression and freedom from unreasonable search or seizure.
Mosley found that, "the decision to issue the Proclamation does not bear the hallmarks of reasonableness – justification, transparency and intelligibility – and was not justified in relation to the relevant factual and legal constraints that were required to be taken into consideration."
"In my view," he added, "there can be only one reasonable interpretation of EA sections 3 and 17 and paragraph 2(c) of the CSIS Act and the Applicants have established that the legal constraints on the discretion of the GIC to declare a public order emergency were not satisfied."
The Act was drawn up in 1985 to "authorize the taking of special temporary measures to ensure safety and security during national emergencies and to amend other Acts in consequence thereof."It defined a "public welfare emergency" as an incident caused by "fire, flood, drought, storm, earthquake or other natural phenomenon, disease in human beings, animals or plants, or accident or pollution" that "may result in a danger to life or property, social disruption or a breakdown in the flow of essential goods, services or resources, so serious as to be a national emergency."
Trudeau's invocation of the Act in 2022 was the first time it had ever been used.
This is a breaking story and will be updated.
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