{"id":97218,"date":"2025-08-19T05:00:32","date_gmt":"2025-08-19T09:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=97218"},"modified":"2025-08-18T19:47:05","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T23:47:05","slug":"bad-laws-in-canada-must-be-challenged-in-court","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2025\/08\/19\/bad-laws-in-canada-must-be-challenged-in-court\/","title":{"rendered":"Bad laws in Canada must be challenged in court"},"content":{"rendered":"

At Rigid Thinking<\/em>, Damian Penny<\/a> says — and I wholeheartedly agree — that it’s a good thing for laws to be challenged in the courts, but especially<\/em> when it’s called an “emergency”:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[Retired Canadian veteran Jeff] Evely, with the help of some conservative\/libertarian-ish legal organizations, plans to challenge the woods ban in court<\/a> as a violation of the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms<\/em><\/a>. This is not a popular position here in Nova Scotia (in online discussions, the phrases “Maple MAGA” and the venerable “American-style” come up a lot) and I am not sure he’ll be successful.<\/p>\n

But, honestly, I give him credit for trying. In fact, I’d argue his Charter challenge is win-win for everyone in Nova Scotia, whether one supports, opposes or remains indifferent to the policy.<\/p>\n

That’s not despite the pressing emergency posed by the forest fire threat, but because of it. <\/p>\n

When we’re faced with a crisis, that’s precisely when governments are tempted to seize as much power and authority as possible – and, more importantly, when the public is more inclined to go along with it.<\/p>\n

Hence, Trudeau I imposing War Measures Act<\/em> provisions during the 1970 October crisis, the PATRIOT Act<\/em> debate after 9\/11, COVID-19 restrictions during the pandemic, Trudeau II using the Emergencies Act<\/em> when the “Freedom Convoy” set up shop in downtown Ottawa, and now Premier Houston (whom I support, despite some misgivings about this issue) using sweeping measures to tramp down the forest fire risk.<\/p>\n

And sometimes such powers are justified under the circumstances<\/em>. Even self-professed libertarians will admit as such when the emergency is something they’re personally worried about, and when a leader from the “good” team is in power.1<\/sup><\/p>\n

But they aren’t always justified. And governments definitely<\/em> can’t be trusted to handle such power responsibly the longer the “emergency” goes on. <\/p>\n

\n
    \n
  1. The rise of Trump has allowed many “libertarians” to reveal themselves as authoritarians, but that’s for another post.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    At Rigid Thinking, Damian Penny says — and I wholeheartedly agree — that it’s a good thing for laws to be challenged in the courts, but especially when it’s called an “emergency”: [Retired Canadian veteran Jeff] Evely, with the help of some conservative\/libertarian-ish legal organizations, plans to challenge the woods ban in court as a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6,84,9,28,53],"tags":[715,267,529,524,217],"class_list":["post-97218","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bureaucracy","category-cancon","category-government","category-law","category-media","category-politics","tag-constitution","tag-justice","tag-lawyers","tag-novascotia","tag-rights"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-pi2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97218"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97218\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":97220,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97218\/revisions\/97220"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}