What did Canadian courts and inquiries later conclude about the legality and justification for the 2022 account freezes?
Executive summary
The judicial record concluded that the federal government’s freezing of bank accounts under the Emergencies Act during the 2022 Freedom Convoy was unlawful and unjustified: Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled the invocation unreasonable and that the account freezes violated Charter protections, a finding later upheld by the Federal Court of Appeal (FCA) [1] [2]. That judicial view sits in tension with the Public Order Emergency Commission (the Rouleau inquiry), which concluded the government met the legal threshold to invoke emergency powers and to employ economic measures, including account freezes [3].
1. Federal Court: account freezes infringed Charter rights and were unreasonable
In January 2024 Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley found the government’s use of the Emergencies Act to address the convoy was “unreasonable,” and that several of the economic measures — including directing financial institutions to monitor and freeze accounts — breached Charter protections and amounted to unlawful state action [1] [4]. Commentators and plaintiffs framed Mosley’s decision as a sharp rebuke to the scale and procedural form of the account freezes, with the judge concluding they lacked proper safeguards and due process when imposed without judicial authorization [1].
2. Federal Court of Appeal: reaffirmation and emphasis on s.8 search-and-seizure concerns
The Federal Court of Appeal dismissed appeals and upheld Mosley’s ruling, characterizing the process of directing banks to freeze accounts without warrants or prior judicial authorization as “troubling in the extreme” and “egregious,” and explicitly finding that the freezes violated section 8 of the Charter (protection against unreasonable search and seizure) [2]. The FCA’s decision underlined that even if the government believed public order was threatened, the chosen economic measures overstepped constitutional boundaries and lacked the necessary judicial oversight [2].
3. Courts on the broader threshold for emergency powers: not a national-security situation
In describing the overall decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, appellate judges stressed that while the convoy was disruptive and caused local public-order problems, it “fell well short of a threat to national security,” noting that the invocation preceded completion of an alternative threat assessment and therefore could not be justified by an immediate security imperative [5]. That factual finding about the absence of a national-security threat buttressed the courts’ conclusions that the most intrusive powers — such as sweeping financial measures — were disproportionate and unjustified [5].
4. Public inquiry (Rouleau): a contrary institutional judgment supporting invocation
By contrast, the Public Order Emergency Commission led by Justice Paul Rouleau concluded in its public inquiry report that the government did meet the legal threshold to invoke the Emergencies Act and that the economic measures, including bank-account freezes targeted at suspected organizers and enablers, were within the scope of the Act as it was designed to be used [3]. Rouleau justified the use of emergency powers in part by cataloguing operational failures, confusion across policing levels, and the government’s perception of serious danger — factors that in his view supported the need for extraordinary tools [3].
5. The clash: judicial constitutional scrutiny versus inquiry’s policy judgment
The resulting posture is a clear institutional split: courts applying Charter standards found the specific economic measures unconstitutional and the invocation unreasonable because of process and rights-violation concerns, while the independent public inquiry judged the factual and policy environment sufficient to justify invoking the Act and deploying account freezes as a tool [1] [2] [3]. The government has signaled it would review and in some instances appeal court rulings, reflecting the continuing legal and political contest between constitutional limits and executive claims of necessity [4].
Conclusion
Canadian courts ultimately concluded that freezing bank accounts under the Emergencies Act in 2022 was not justified as implemented: the Federal Court found the measures unconstitutional and unreasonable and the Federal Court of Appeal upheld that finding, emphasizing violations of section 8 and absence of proper judicial authorization [1] [2]. The Rouleau inquiry reached the opposing view that the legal threshold for invoking emergency powers and using economic measures was met, producing an unresolved institutional disagreement that has shaped subsequent litigation and political debate [3] [5].