Freedom Convoy Lawsuit Looks to Make Senior Ministers Personally Liable for Their Actions

Trudeau government is up to its ears in legal action over its pandemic response

It should come as no surprise to the Trudeau government that it is facing more lawsuits. This time launched by members of the Freedom Convoy in the wake of the Federal Court’s ruling that its invocation of the Emergencies Act was illegal, unconstitutional and infringed on the Charter and privacy rights of citizens. And it is about time. The people from the Freedom Convoy who experienced the horror and helplessness of finding their bank accounts, their credit cards, their automatic payments, and their automatic deposits frozen – with no notification, and as we now know, with no justification, deserve to be able hold this government to account for what it did to them.

For the people who experienced this nightmare the cash in their pockets, if they had any, was all they had to see them through the next days or weeks, because they had no idea how long this would go on. But that was of little importance to Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland because it wasn’t enough to steal the millions of dollars their supporters had donated to their cause through GoFundMe and GiveSendGo. It wasn’t enough to slander them and call them terrorists and Nazis, and it wasn’t enough to unleash riot police on them with tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets, batons, and horses. It was time to hit them where it really hurt – in their pocketbooks. That, she thought, would teach these rabble rousers not to challenge her government. To hell with the fact they might have chronically sick children who needed medicine they wouldn’t be able to pay for, to hell with the fact that their families would suffer and might go hungry, to hell with the fact they would miss mortgage or rent payments, to hell with the fact that she was invading their privacy and putting a black mark on their credit record, and to hell with the fact that what she was doing was illegal – they needed to be taught a lesson. Now one of these lawsuits is hoping to teach government ministers like Freeland and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau that same lesson by hitting them where it will hurt them the most too, in their own personal pocketbooks.

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A lawsuit launched by the Alberta based law firm Loberg Ector LLP on behalf of 20 victims of the Trudeau government’s unconstitutional misuse of the Emergencies Act is doing just that. They are seeking compensation from, not just from the Liberal government for its unjustified use of the Emergencies Act, but some of its cabinet ministers as well, by holding them personally liable. Also being held to account are police agencies (RCMP and Ottawa Police Service) and the Canadian financial institutions who also followed the unlawful orders of the Liberal government as well as the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), its former Chairman Bernie Farber, former acting Ottawa Police Chief Steve Bell and former RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki. Some of the Liberal government Cabinet Ministers being sued for personal liability include Prime Minister Trudeau, Finance Minister Freeland, and former Attorney General David Lametti, to name a few. The lawsuit maintains that these members of the government violated their public office when they knowingly failed to abide by the actual provisions required to invoke the Emergencies Act.

Trudeau, Freeland and Lametti

According Blair Ector, a founding member of Loberg Ector LLP, there is case law that supports the notion that elected members can be held liable for unconstitutional legislation or behaviour. It is similar to corporate law wherein when company directors act abhorrently or illegally, there is a provision for something called ‘piercing of the corporate veil,’ to legally go after them personally for their misconduct, rather than the company. So, in this case Loberg Ector LLP, is ‘piercing the government veil’ to hold cabinet ministers personally liable for their illegal actions. In other words they will have to pay any damages awarded to the plaintiffs from their own pockets rather than government coffers. Ector does say that it is up to the court to determine how such damages will be awarded and paid, but he is hopeful that in filing the suit in the manner they have, the ministers named, will be held personally liable. They are also seeking indemnity from the banks.

This lawsuit isn’t just about the financial hardships these people endured due to having every aspect of their finances frozen, although that was terrible. One of the plaintiffs, Eddy Cornell, a veteran of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) recounted how he had to depend on the generosity of others to give him money to put gas in his vehicle to return to his home in New Brunswick after the Act was invoked. They are also accusing the defendants of negligence in their ‘duty of care’ in their roles as government, banks and police services by unlawfully disclosing the plaintiffs’ personal and financial information when they seized their financial accounts.

They are also seeking damages for what they maintain was a form of deliberate and calculated character assassination through false public statements made by the defendants – including the Prime Minister himself – that harmed the reputations and defamed the character of the protesters. They claim that Trudeau, along with other defendants, knowingly misled the public about the nature, scope and motives of protest participants and the Freedom Convoy as a whole, by conspiring with major Canadian media outlets to publish false reports about their activities. This would, no doubt, include labelling them as Nazis and antisemites, accusing them of being racists, and associating them with, or accusing them of terrorism, violence, arson and thievery. All of which has since turned out to be hyperbolic nonsense and patently false.

In connection with this they are also seeking damages for the harassment and intimidation carried out by the defendants. Protesters endured threats aimed at coercing them to end or leave the demonstration. These widely publicized threats made by the defendants, including the police, caused protesters to fear for their safety and the safety of their loved ones. These threats, no doubt included warnings that authorities would seize and euthanize pets that some protesters had brought with them, along with threatening to have the Children’s Aid Society take their children from them in the name of safety, implying that somehow by being in the care of their parents children were unsafe.

This, coupled with the character assassination, they say, influenced various elements of Canadian society to view the protesters and the Freedom Convoy in such a negative light that it caused many Canadians to endorse the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, based these falsehoods. This is where the CAHN becomes part of the lawsuit due to the allegations it made about the convoy that were echoed by the government and the media. This included alleging they were insurrectionists, white supremists and terrorists. The plaintiffs are further suing for damages related to the physical injuries several of them incurred when they were battered, assaulted and otherwise injured by police engaging in enforcement actions pursuant to the government’s unlawful enactment of the Emergencies Act. 

Ector views the invocation of the Emergencies Act by the Trudeau government as one of greatest breaches of collective Charter rights in the history of Canada, particularly when its coupled with the shocking way in which the banks so willingly did the government’s bidding. He told True North Media, that this was largely due to the manner in which the Economic Order of the Act was crafted, bypassing the judiciary which would have required the issuing or warrants, based on credible evidence provided by the government. By excluding the judicial component the order made the banks, the police and the government the judge, jury and executioner in determining whose bank accounts would be frozen on what appeared to have been a very arbitrary basis. 

In its News Release announcing this legal action, the Loberg Ector LLP, made the following statement, which sends a strong message to the Trudeau government on behalf of all Canadians when it comes to their right to freedom of speech and expression, of which that this government needs some serious reminding

“A democracy is only as strong as its commitment to the rule of law, and when a government decides that it’s not bound by the law of Canada, the resulting unlawful action not only breaks the law, it undermines and degrades the very democracy that put that government in power in the first place. These unlawful actions also undermine the integrity of our community and tells Canadian citizens that they can no longer rely on the government to protect our liberty and freedom, but instead they should be fearful of a government that considers themselves unrestrained by the rule of law. This is not about any single instance of free speech, or any particular protest, and it specifically does not matter how anyone feels about the Freedom Convoy Protest. What matters is the obligation the government has to the people of this nation to obey the law. This litigation is about that obligation.”

This is not the only lawsuit the Trudeau government is facing as a result of the Federal Court’s ruling. High profile members of the Freedom Convoy — Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, Tom Marazzo and Danny Bulford — have also filed lawsuits against the seeking damages for Trudeau’s illegal invocation of the Emergencies Act in the amount of $2 million. And quite likely there will be more filings as the government froze the finances of some 260 people, many of whom were not even part of the Freedom Convoy, but merely family members who shared joint accounts or finances. The government is also facing a $500 million class action suit from some 300 former and serving members of the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) for harms caused to them by the vaccine mandate the Trudeau government forced on them, against advice from the CAF itself. A class action lawsuit has also been filed with the Federal Court by the law firm Grey Wowk Spencer LLP on behalf of unvaccinated individuals who lost their jobs or were denied their rights for not adhering to government vaccine mandates.

The Trudeau government will be fighting these lawsuits on every front, spending millions, if not billions of tax dollars in lawyers fees. It has already said it will appeal the Federal Court’s ruling that its invocation of the Act was illegal and unconstitutional and it will fight these civil suits tooth and nail, using every legal trick in the book to stall, delay and exhaust the petitioners. But this government deserves to be held accountable for its actions against the Freedom Convoy and against Canadians everywhere for the coercive methods it used to force everyone into taking COVID 19 vaccines.

When governments overreach to the point that their actions become more totalitarian than democratic, outside of protesting, like the Freedom Convoy did, the only other avenue is to have the courts rein them in and make them accountable for their actions is through civil lawsuits. A Federal Court has already done that in ruling the government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was illegal. Let’s hope, not just to the sake of the people that were directly affected by its actions, but for the sake of the country, more judge’s rebuke this government and make it pay, and hold some of its senior members personally liable for their illegal and authoritarian actions.

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