The reaction of the city of Ottawa to Freedom Convoy protests and the Rolling Thunder Veterans Ride demonstrates that many citizens of Ottawa hold the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and any expression of democracy in the nation’s capital in contempt..The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada even went so far as to indulge in his own brand of Trudeau inspired name calling. In a recent French-language, Le Devoir interview Chief Justice Wagner injudiciously referred to protesters as engaged in “anarchy”, who are “hostage takers”, and people “taking the law into their own hands”. Real issues arise with a chief justice making such inflammatory comments while cases are pending before the lower courts. Canadian citizens, in my personal opinion, have been wrongfully accused of criminal mischief for participating in Charter protected peaceful assembly and association. They are presumed innocent and such comments by a sitting Chief Justice, much like the comments of Beverley McLachlin, a retired chief justice now in the employ of the Communist Party of China, are completely without precedent..It is a question of some nicety as to whether any accused peaceful protesters can now receive a fair trial given Justice Wagner’s opinion that they are actually “hostage takers” who under the Criminal Code of Canada s. 279.1(1) are liable to “imprisonment for life”..While it is likely that Chief Justice Wagner was speaking metaphorically, it is no excuse for the chief justice of Canada who also Chairs the Canadian Judicial (complaints) Council, to use such intemperate language with regard to matters pending before the lower courts which in all likelihood will end up the Supreme Court of Canada as a matter of right..I have spoken personally with people who were witnesses to the peaceful nature of the protest. I have spoken to numerous eyewitnesses who advised me that the only thing that Tamara Lich was guilty of was working with Ottawa police to make sure that emergency access lanes remained open on Wellington Street. I am further advised that to the extent that there was any blockage of either downtown Ottawa or the Supreme Court of Canada that this was done both by the city of Ottawa trying to block access to downtown with snow plows to keep protesters out and by the police occupying the supreme court precinct as their operations staging area. This calls into question the degree to which the supreme court of Canada has taken sides with regard to these issues..It is certainly my hope that Tamara Lich’s legal counsel will consider taking the unprecedented step of applying for a judicial stay of proceeding on the basis of Chief Justice Wagner’s completely inexcusable interference in Ms. Lich’s right to a fair trial. That issue alone should be litigated to the Supreme Court of Canada (absent Justice Wagner) prior to any further judicial proceeding in her case..With due respect to Chief Justice Wagner, his comments seem to underline the general contempt that many Ottawa dwellers have for working Canadians. Citizens of Ottawa fail to recognize that they live in an extremely privileged economic bubble that is in fact paid for by the tractor-trailer and pickup truck driving men and women of Canada. Apparently, much like the 20% of unvaccinated Canadians on Trudeau’s no fly list, people who drive pickup trucks to grow our food or to go to work are somehow climate criminals who need to be punished. Punitive taxes are planned to “encourage" them to drive vehicles powered by coal fired electricity or vehicles that take electricity from hydro projects or “bio generation” that killed and continues to kill millions of carbon absorbing trees to create fictitiously green energy..All of this appears to be supported by Justice Wagner in the Carbon Tax Reference. Like a lot of “Official Ottawa”, Chief Justice Wagner seems to accept the application of punitive taxes and the destruction of the economy of Alberta under the aegis of some undefined and unproven “climate emergency” that “poses a grave threat to humanity’s future”. Chief Justice Wagner came to this conclusion without the matter ever being the subject of actual evidentiary hearings in the lower courts. This conclusion appears based on lawyers arguing a division of powers, tax case. According to Chief Justice Wagner, no evidence was required because the issue of whether global “climate change” could be cured by punitive taxes on working Canadians was “uncontested” by constitutional lawyers who didn’t likely know that this issue was even before the courts. .It is time for citizens of Ottawa to take note that their disdain for their fellow citizens may in fact sow the seeds of an abrupt end to the economic privilege they enjoy from the tax dollars of working Canadians. Ottawa’s continued attempts to destroy Alberta as the economic engine of Canada under the Climate 2030 agenda will have the likely result of at least 50% plus 1 Albertans voting to leave Canada along with the 60 billion dollars a year they generate in national tax revenue. When Federal pensions are reduced in value by forty cent Canadian dollars and the economic privilege that citizens of Ottawa have always enjoyed at the expense of working Canadians, maybe then they will reflect on what electing economically illiterate World Economic Forum acolytes has done for the well-being of their families..Recent court decisions at every level do not appear to be the least bit tempered with any sense of economic reality or understanding of the economic damage being done to Canada by allowing the Trudeau Government to disregard the Constitution of Canada under the combined climate change and public health “emergency” hoaxes that threaten our very existence as a “free and democratic society.”.As an Albertan, I personally feel that it is the future of Alberta and the future of my family that has been “taken hostage” by a judiciary that is unduly deferential to the political and administrative class at the expense of the citizen..It is time for citizens to re-evaluate the degree to which the entire Constitution needs to be revisited from the standpoint of re-evaluating the extent to which professional politicians operate as elected dictators and the degree to which they are aided an abetted by a judicial tradition that has always been overly deferential to “crown” prerogatives, and the base desires of the venal political operatives that appoint the increasingly political, while un-elected, Canadian judiciary..If the most expeditious way to effect constitutional change is through Alberta holding a referendum and declaring itself independent of Canada and crafting its own Constitution so be it. I am certain that the Constitution of an Independent Alberta can serve as a model for the rest of Canada. It would certainly bring an end to the treatment of Albertans as second class citizens in Canada as well as redefining the relationship between free people and the political and judicial elites that seem to have forgotten whose interests they are required to serve. .Guest columnist Jeffrey R.W. Rath is a constitutional lawyer and a Director of the Alberta Prosperity Society
The reaction of the city of Ottawa to Freedom Convoy protests and the Rolling Thunder Veterans Ride demonstrates that many citizens of Ottawa hold the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms and any expression of democracy in the nation’s capital in contempt..The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada even went so far as to indulge in his own brand of Trudeau inspired name calling. In a recent French-language, Le Devoir interview Chief Justice Wagner injudiciously referred to protesters as engaged in “anarchy”, who are “hostage takers”, and people “taking the law into their own hands”. Real issues arise with a chief justice making such inflammatory comments while cases are pending before the lower courts. Canadian citizens, in my personal opinion, have been wrongfully accused of criminal mischief for participating in Charter protected peaceful assembly and association. They are presumed innocent and such comments by a sitting Chief Justice, much like the comments of Beverley McLachlin, a retired chief justice now in the employ of the Communist Party of China, are completely without precedent..It is a question of some nicety as to whether any accused peaceful protesters can now receive a fair trial given Justice Wagner’s opinion that they are actually “hostage takers” who under the Criminal Code of Canada s. 279.1(1) are liable to “imprisonment for life”..While it is likely that Chief Justice Wagner was speaking metaphorically, it is no excuse for the chief justice of Canada who also Chairs the Canadian Judicial (complaints) Council, to use such intemperate language with regard to matters pending before the lower courts which in all likelihood will end up the Supreme Court of Canada as a matter of right..I have spoken personally with people who were witnesses to the peaceful nature of the protest. I have spoken to numerous eyewitnesses who advised me that the only thing that Tamara Lich was guilty of was working with Ottawa police to make sure that emergency access lanes remained open on Wellington Street. I am further advised that to the extent that there was any blockage of either downtown Ottawa or the Supreme Court of Canada that this was done both by the city of Ottawa trying to block access to downtown with snow plows to keep protesters out and by the police occupying the supreme court precinct as their operations staging area. This calls into question the degree to which the supreme court of Canada has taken sides with regard to these issues..It is certainly my hope that Tamara Lich’s legal counsel will consider taking the unprecedented step of applying for a judicial stay of proceeding on the basis of Chief Justice Wagner’s completely inexcusable interference in Ms. Lich’s right to a fair trial. That issue alone should be litigated to the Supreme Court of Canada (absent Justice Wagner) prior to any further judicial proceeding in her case..With due respect to Chief Justice Wagner, his comments seem to underline the general contempt that many Ottawa dwellers have for working Canadians. Citizens of Ottawa fail to recognize that they live in an extremely privileged economic bubble that is in fact paid for by the tractor-trailer and pickup truck driving men and women of Canada. Apparently, much like the 20% of unvaccinated Canadians on Trudeau’s no fly list, people who drive pickup trucks to grow our food or to go to work are somehow climate criminals who need to be punished. Punitive taxes are planned to “encourage" them to drive vehicles powered by coal fired electricity or vehicles that take electricity from hydro projects or “bio generation” that killed and continues to kill millions of carbon absorbing trees to create fictitiously green energy..All of this appears to be supported by Justice Wagner in the Carbon Tax Reference. Like a lot of “Official Ottawa”, Chief Justice Wagner seems to accept the application of punitive taxes and the destruction of the economy of Alberta under the aegis of some undefined and unproven “climate emergency” that “poses a grave threat to humanity’s future”. Chief Justice Wagner came to this conclusion without the matter ever being the subject of actual evidentiary hearings in the lower courts. This conclusion appears based on lawyers arguing a division of powers, tax case. According to Chief Justice Wagner, no evidence was required because the issue of whether global “climate change” could be cured by punitive taxes on working Canadians was “uncontested” by constitutional lawyers who didn’t likely know that this issue was even before the courts. .It is time for citizens of Ottawa to take note that their disdain for their fellow citizens may in fact sow the seeds of an abrupt end to the economic privilege they enjoy from the tax dollars of working Canadians. Ottawa’s continued attempts to destroy Alberta as the economic engine of Canada under the Climate 2030 agenda will have the likely result of at least 50% plus 1 Albertans voting to leave Canada along with the 60 billion dollars a year they generate in national tax revenue. When Federal pensions are reduced in value by forty cent Canadian dollars and the economic privilege that citizens of Ottawa have always enjoyed at the expense of working Canadians, maybe then they will reflect on what electing economically illiterate World Economic Forum acolytes has done for the well-being of their families..Recent court decisions at every level do not appear to be the least bit tempered with any sense of economic reality or understanding of the economic damage being done to Canada by allowing the Trudeau Government to disregard the Constitution of Canada under the combined climate change and public health “emergency” hoaxes that threaten our very existence as a “free and democratic society.”.As an Albertan, I personally feel that it is the future of Alberta and the future of my family that has been “taken hostage” by a judiciary that is unduly deferential to the political and administrative class at the expense of the citizen..It is time for citizens to re-evaluate the degree to which the entire Constitution needs to be revisited from the standpoint of re-evaluating the extent to which professional politicians operate as elected dictators and the degree to which they are aided an abetted by a judicial tradition that has always been overly deferential to “crown” prerogatives, and the base desires of the venal political operatives that appoint the increasingly political, while un-elected, Canadian judiciary..If the most expeditious way to effect constitutional change is through Alberta holding a referendum and declaring itself independent of Canada and crafting its own Constitution so be it. I am certain that the Constitution of an Independent Alberta can serve as a model for the rest of Canada. It would certainly bring an end to the treatment of Albertans as second class citizens in Canada as well as redefining the relationship between free people and the political and judicial elites that seem to have forgotten whose interests they are required to serve. .Guest columnist Jeffrey R.W. Rath is a constitutional lawyer and a Director of the Alberta Prosperity Society
