In response to the feckless government of Canada’s Justin Trudeau exerting greater and greater pressure on Ottawa authorities to end the ongoing #FreedomConvoy protests, Ottowa police have decreed that “Anyone attempting to bring material supports (gas, etc.) to the demonstrators could be subject to arrest. Enforcement is underway.” However, the Canadian Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms has warned the department that under The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, these actions are illegal.
IMPORTANT: Anyone attempting to bring material supports (gas, etc.) to the demonstrators could be subject to arrest. Enforcement is underway. #ottawa #ottnews pic.twitter.com/tp4e5d2xe1
— Ottawa Police (@OttawaPolice) February 6, 2022
States lawyer Nicholas Wansbutter, retained by the Justice Centre, which is representing the Freedom Convoy in their ongoing litigation with Ottowa said in a statement from the JCCF,
“People who bring food, water, gasoline or other supplies to peacefully protesting truckers are not breaking any law. There is no basis for this police threat, that was issued by Twitter this morning,”
“In a free and democratic society that is governed by the rule of law, citizens can freely associate with each other, including the giving and receiving of goods and gifts. There is no law that would allow the Ottawa Police to arrest people for giving fuel or food to another Canadian,” continues Mr. Wansbutter.
“The truckers themselves are exercising their Charter freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly, as they are legally entitled to do,” concludes Mr. Wansbutter.”
More riot police in ottawa and bombardiers with big guns, guns for what there was no crime being done except pissing off some people. Rt and follow us pic.twitter.com/gUvBJDhRki
— TruckersForFreedom (@Truckers4Freedm) February 7, 2022
The Canadian ‘Charter Of Freedoms’ Is A Joke
– The Illegal Actions Of The Ottawa Police Prove It
It’s’ extremely telling that in Mr. Wansbutter’s remarks he very specifically uses the phrase “In a free and democratic society” because it belies the inherent weakness of the Canadian Constitution’s answer to the Bill of Rights highlighting its inferiority. The first clause of the Charter states,
“The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.”
Meaning quite simply that ANY ‘rights’ or ‘freedoms’ that the Canadian people enjoy de facto must be deemed as subject only to such reasonable limits as Parliament, the Government, and the Courts decide. Whereas Mr. Biden may fantasize here in America that “No amendment, no amendment to the Constitution is absolute,” the US Constitution, however, leaves no such room for the government’s ability to to interpret American’s rights as proven in DC v. Heller when the Supreme Court Ruled as delivered witheringly by the late Justice Antonin Scalia “the Second Amendment, like the First and Fourth Amendments, codified a pre-existing right. The very text of the Second Amendment implicitly recognizes the pre-existence of the right and declares only that it “shall not be infringed.”
Where the US Bill of Rights ” implicitly recognizes the pre-existence” of our rights and freedoms, the Canadian counterpart presupposes the Government (or the Crown if you will) possessing the write to prescribe reasonable limits upon them as can be “demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society” which is so fluid and so subjective a measure that it can be rendered effectively meaningless as a barrier to an authoritarian government’s whims. It’s little surprise that it was signed into law by Justin Trudeau’s father during his tenure as Prime Minister.
The #FreedomConvoy which much to the leftists’ chagrin has proven to be utterly peaceful, orderly, and non-violent in stark contrast to 2020’s violent leftwing riots is now subject to those whims and will very likely find the soaring rhetoric of The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, to be of little comfort as their property is unlawfully seized and as many of them are fined, arrested, and imprisoned if Trudeau continues on this course.
