They are trying again, desperately hoping that this time the results will be different. I think they call that magical thinking.

After losing in Federal Court and at the Federal Court of Appeals, Canada’s Liberal government ha appealed to the Supreme Court, seeking justification for its imposition of the Emergencies Act to end the Freedom Convoy in 2022. Why they think the Supreme Court will overturn an overwhelming lower court verdict I have no idea.

The appeal is necessary though to settle the issue for once and for all. The Emergencies Act is an extraordinary piece of legislation that should be used only in a true national emergency. It suspends civil liberties and essentially turns the government (and by inference the Prime Minister) into a dictator. That its predecessor was called the War Measures Act gives you an inkling of the situations in which its use was anticipated. It was never intended to be used to solve an embarrassing parking problem in downtown Ottawa.

Which is essentially the way Justin Trudeau used it. Unwilling to meet with truckers protesting his COVID-19 policies, and with Ottawa police and local politicians declining to enforce municipal parking regulations, Trudeau lowered the boom and declared a national emergency – before any real attempt had been made to remove the trucks.

People across the country suspected of supporting the protest had their bank access frozen. No warning, no conviction of any crime. And sometimes, given that this is government we are talking about, people with no connections to the protest found themselves under government assault.

Trudeau had opportunities when the protest began to diffuse the situation. he could have sent a government representative to meet with the convoy leadership, as he had the previous year with indigenous protestors who shut down Canada’s east-west rail line. Instead he called the protestors names. (In fairness, they were calling him names too, but politicians aren’t supposed to take those personally. There’s an adage about sticks and stones that seems appropriate here.)

When the trucks were gone, the legal battle began. Protest organizers were arrested and held without bail. These alleged insurrectionists were charged with mischief – and probably spent more time waiting for trial than their sentence would have been had they just pleaded guilty.

Mischief is not the most serious crime to be found in the Criminal Code. When found guilty, the three principal organizers of the convoy received between three and twelve months of house arrest. For this they called out the army?

When use of the Emergencies Act was challenged in court, the government lost. They appealed and lost again. The justices did not seem at all impressed by the government’s case: the criteria for using the Act is well laid out and the bar to trigger it is pretty high. Illegally parked trucks, no matter how inconvenient, don’t pass that bar.

I’m sure the Liberals were hoping that the protestors had the truck loaded with weapons and explosives, but they didn’t. Just ordinary Canadians upset that Justin Trudeau’s policies were costing them their livelihood. (Whether those policies were justified is a discussion for another day perhaps. The government response to COVID-19 is perhaps best described as inept, but well meaning.)

Then again, there was the attempt to shut down Parliament for a couple of years to allow the Prime Minister and Cabinet to rule as they saw fit. Maybe the response was just inept.

The good thing is, that with this appeal the argument will be put to rest. There is no higher authority in Canadian law than the Supreme Court.

It may take a couple of years. By which time Justin Trudeau and the Freedom Convoy will only be a faint memory. It will be good though to have a definitive answer.