The Emergencies Act.

In late January 2022, a convoy of trucks and protesters — opposed to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and other rules — drove into Ottawa and stayed. Trucks parked across downtown streets for weeks. Border crossings in other provinces were blocked too. Police could not, or did not, clear them.

On February 14, 2022, the federal government reached for a tool it had never used before: the Emergencies Act.

In its declaration, the government set out its own rationale for invoking the Act. It pointed to the continuing blockades, to threats to oppose their removal by force, and to threats or the use of serious violence against persons and critical infrastructure for a political or ideological objective. That was the government’s stated basis — the same basis the courts would later find had not met the legal test.

What is the Emergencies Act? It is a 1988 law that lets the federal Cabinet declare a national emergency and grant itself extraordinary, temporary powers — things it normally could not do. It replaced the old War Measures Act. To use the "public order emergency" version, the government has to clear a deliberately high bar, often called "the threshold": there must be a genuine national emergency, arising from threats to the security of Canada, that cannot be dealt with under existing laws.

And what counts as a "threat to the security of Canada"? This is the crux — and it was not the government's call to make. The Emergencies Act contains no definition of its own; it borrows the one from section 2 of the CSIS Act, the law governing Canada's spy service. That definition is deliberately narrow. The only branch that could possibly fit the convoy was "the threat or use of acts of serious violence" against people or property for a political or ideological goal. Two things followed. First, the government's own intelligence service had already told Cabinet the opposite — CSIS assessed that the protests did not meet the definition. Second, when the case reached the courts, the government argued the words should be read more loosely once the Act is invoked. The Federal Court (2024) and the Court of Appeal (2026) both refused: the Court of Appeal held that stretching "serious violence" to cover economic disruption of critical infrastructure was "unwarranted and unreasonable," and that serious violence "must involve at least bodily harm." On the evidence, Cabinet had "very little hard evidence of any actual serious violence." That borrowed, unmet definition is the single most concrete reason the first-ever use of the Act was found unlawful.

Using those new powers, the government brought in temporary orders. Two mattered most. One restricted protests at certain locations. The other — the Economic Order — let banks freeze people’s accounts if they were tied to the blockades, without first going to a judge for a warrant.

What the orders actually authorized. The two orders were short but sweeping. Between them, the government gave itself power to:

• Designate "protected places." Bar protest at named sites — Parliament Hill, border crossings, airports and other critical infrastructure.
• Forbid travel to a protest. Prohibit going to, or taking part in, a public assembly that could reasonably be expected to lead to a breach of the peace — and bar bringing a child to one.
• Conscript tow-truck operators. Compel private companies and individuals to provide essential services — such as towing the parked trucks — with compensation, whether they agreed or not.
• Freeze accounts without a warrant. Direct banks and insurers to freeze the accounts of people tied to the blockades, and require crowdfunding sites and payment processors to register and report to FINTRAC.

Parliament has to vote on whether to keep an emergency declaration. On February 21, the House of Commons confirmed it, 185 to 151. The blockades were cleared. Then, on February 23 — just nine days after it started — the government revoked the emergency, and all the special orders ended.

The law also requires a public inquiry whenever the Act is used. That inquiry, led by Justice Paul Rouleau, reported in February 2023. It concluded the government had cleared the threshold — in other words, that using the Act was justified — although it was sharply critical of the failures that led up to it, and made 56 recommendations.

Separately, civil-liberties groups and others took the government to court, arguing the Act should never have been used. Here the answer flipped. In 2024 the Federal Court ruled the invocation was unlawful — both unreasonable and beyond the government’s legal authority. In 2026 the Federal Court of Appeal confirmed those findings, setting out the reasoning in greater detail.

"Unreasonable" and "ultra vires." The courts said two things. First, the decision to invoke the Act was "unreasonable" — the government had not shown it really met the legal test. Second, it was "ultra vires", a Latin term that simply means beyond its legal authority: the government did not have the power to do this in the first place. The courts also found the orders broke the Charter of Rights — freedom of expression, and the protection against having your property searched or seized (your bank account frozen) without proper safeguards.

The government disagrees. In March 2026 it asked the Supreme Court of Canada to take the case. As of June 19, 2026, the Supreme Court has not yet decided whether it will even hear the appeal — so the final answer is still unwritten.

The Act builds in two reviews after the fact, and both happened. A Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency — senators and MPs sitting together — was struck within weeks to scrutinise the invocation. And the Rouleau inquiry made 56 recommendations, several calling for the Emergencies Act itself to be amended.

What came of it is thinner. The government's formal response, in March 2024, committed mostly to process improvements — better intelligence-sharing, infrastructure planning, "engagement" on modernising the Act — and left many items to provinces and municipalities. It later said it needed more time, and tied any legislative change to the outcome of the ongoing court case. As of June 19, 2026, no substantive reform responding to the Rouleau recommendations has been enacted — the public-order-emergency threshold and powers stand as they did in 2022. The one body that could still force the issue is the Supreme Court, if it agrees to take the case.