The Liberals keep Rouleauing-along

Justice Rouleau finds the Emergency Act warranted

Canada is a small country and personal relationships often define outcomes, political, judicial or business. Many important decisions are made behind closed doors at the Toronto Club or the National Club or the Albany Club. When a Prime Minister finds himself with his tits caught in the ringer of a poorly thought through decision, he can wriggle out by calling in his chips.

Justice Paul Rouleau, a long time Liberal and a key part of John Turner’s campaign, had a storied career since he graduated from law school in 1977 and was appointed a judge including a serving as a judge of prestigious Court of Appeal for Ontario. By all accounts, he was a fair and balanced judge with a good record and earned the respect of the country for his accomplishments.

Recently, however, he was appointed the Commissioner to review the use of Canada’s War Measures Act (now called the Emergency Act) to quell a protest in Ottawa by truckers’ upset with needless vaccine mandates. The science around COVID has evolved and there is widespread scientific evidence that the mandates were unnecessary and despite the mandates some 80% of Canadians became infected and over 50,000 died. The mandates were draconian and cost many Canadians their livelihoods when they exercised what is (or should be) a constitutional right to refuse a medical treatment without being punished for exercising that freedom. The argument that vaccines protected others from being infected by the unvaccinated has been demonstrated to be nonsense, with vaccinated persons just as likely to spread COVID as unvaccinated.

I listened to the Commission’s hearings and was not surprised when Justice Rouleau conducted those hearings professionally and in a balanced and effective way, ensuring courtroom decorum and showing respect for all witnesses, counsel and those in the gallery. I expected no less and was not disappointed.

But Justice Rouleau now has a stain on his copy book.

Finding the Liberal government was justified to use the extreme power of the Emergency Act after hearing expert witnesses time and again give evidence that there were less intrusive and destructive ways to deal with a peaceful protest, Justice Rouleau chose to side with Justin Trudeau and launder Trudeau’s poor judgment with judicial support. Unfortunately, there is no right of appeal.

By choosing ideology over common sense, Justice Rouleau has set the bar for use of the Emergency Act very low and Canada can expect to see the Emergency Act invoked in the future by governments on either side of the aisle to suppress dissent. Canada moved one step closer to authoritarian rule with this ruling.

History will not be kind to Justice Rouleau, in my opinion. His extraordinary career as a jurist will now be blemished by what seems to be an overtly political ruling that will damage Canada.

I should add that the Twittersphere is full of tripe that claims Justice Rouleau is related to Justin Trudeau. While Pierre Trudeau’s sister was married to a Rouleau, it was a different Rouleau family and the specious claims of a family relationship did nothing to advance the dialogue concerning the Emergency Act Commissions’s finding. Justice Rouleau deserves our respect regardless of our views on his ruling on this issue. Judges have difficult jobs and it is understandable if lamentable that in this instance Justice Rouleau seems to have let his political views cloud his judgment and we will all suffer for it.