OTTAWA -- The Liberal government's decision to invoke the Emergencies Act in response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy protests was unreasonable, unjustified and violated the Charter, the Federal Court has ruled.

In a lengthy ruling published Tuesday, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley found that though the Freedom Convoy protests in early 2022 were causing harm to Canada's economy, trade and commerce, they did not rise to the level of a threat to national security as defined by the law.

He thus sided with civil liberties groups, namely the Canadian Constitutional Foundation (CCF) and the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), who argued the Liberal government was not justified in its historic invocation of the Emergencies Act in February.

"I have concluded that the decision to issue the Proclamation (of the Emergencies Act) 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," Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley wrote.

The ruling was applauded by the CCF and the CCLA, who argued the government had overreached its powers when it controversially invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in history on February 4, 2022, in response to ongoing Freedom Convoy blockades in Ontario and Alberta.

!chuds W