Trudeau's Unconstitutional Emergency Act Relied On State-Backed Fabricated Data

What’s happening: Canada’s Federal Court ruled on Tuesday that the Trudeau government’s use of the Emergencies Act during the 2022 Freedom Convoy was unconstitutional. The government plans to appeal the ruling, potentially taking the case to the Supreme Court of Canada.

Why it matters: In February 2022, the Trudeau government invoked emergency powers in response to peaceful anti-vaccine protests. Exigency measures included arresting civilians and freezing their bank accounts. Some protestors are still in prison.

The scoop: The government justified the emergency response by asserting that the convoy posed a serious national security threat. But new documents reveal that the Trudeau government relied on manufactured intelligence, loosely tying the protestors to Diagolon — a fabricated far-right militia group — which was, in fact, a podcast fan club that posed no threat.

• Zoom in: Most of the intelligence came from one source — the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) — a government-funded nonprofit dedicated to researching and exposing hate crimes.

• No basis in truth: Despite Diagolon’s lack of a membership system or any internal hierarchy, CAHN described it as a “neo-fascist” militia group, basing judgment on out-of-context clips from the founder’s streams. CAHN’s state-backed researchers fed this disinformation to the state-backed media and law enforcement, who accepted it at face value.

Zoom out: The majority of Canada’s media is state-backed. With funding coming directly from the Trudeau administration, the media lacks any incentive to meaningfully challenge the government’s claims. If anything, Canada’s media is incentivized to parrot government disinformation, as in this case.