14-Minute Snap Legal Decision

MP says government announced it would appeal the Emergencies Act ruling prior to actually reading it.

Larry Brock is a Member of Parliament. Before running for election in 2021, he was an Ontario assistant crown attorney for more than 15 years. Prior to that, he spent over a decade as a lawyer in private practice.

In other words, Mr Brock understands the workings of Canada’s legal system. Late last month, he grilled our current Justice Minister, Arif Virani, about the Canadian government’s nearly instantaneous decision to appeal Justice Richard Mosely’s ruling that the Emergencies Act had been invoked illegally.

Mr Brock says the government’s response is usually something along the lines of “we need to review the decision, we need to measure our response, and we will decide in due course whether or not we will launch an appeal.”

But only 14 minutes elapsed, he says, between the time the Emergencies Act ruling became public and the government’s announcement that it would be appealed. The meat of Justice Mosley’s decision is 126 pages long (followed by dozens more pages of appendices). It’s impossible for anyone to read that much legalese in that amount of time - never mind process its significance, canvas a range of informed opinions, and arrive at a sober decision about whether solid grounds for an appeal even exist.

Justice Minister Virani says other people helped him review the lengthy court judgment during those few minutes. According to him, the federal government has “tremendous respect for the federal court, and for all of the judges therein.”

Yeah, right.

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The video may also be viewed on Twitter/X here. The official transcript begins here.