Wagner Won't Step Aside: The Chief Justice Who Smeared Convoy Protesters Refuses to Recuse From the Liberal Emergencies Act Appeal
Chief Justice Richard Wagner — who publicly called Freedom Convoy participants the "start of anarchy" and said they held Ottawa residents "hostage" — has refused to remove himself from the Carney Liberals' Supreme Court bid to overturn two lower court rulings that found the Emergencies Act was invoked illegally. If the fix is in, this is what it looks like.
Editorial cartoon — iVoteLiberal.com
The Setup: Two Courts Said Trudeau Broke the Law
In February 2022, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act to forcibly clear the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. It was the first time in the Act's history it had ever been used. Two separate courts subsequently found that the invocation was unjustified — a remarkable legal rebuke of the Liberal government's most aggressive domestic overreach in modern Canadian history.
Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled in 2024 that the Trudeau government had failed to meet the legal threshold required to invoke the Act. The Liberals appealed. A Federal Court of Appeal panel upheld that ruling. The Liberals appealed again — this time to the Supreme Court of Canada. Under Prime Minister Mark Carney, the Liberal government is now asking the country's top court to reverse those decisions and posthumously validate what two courts have already found was an illegal use of emergency powers.
The Problem: The Chief Justice Already Picked a Side
In 2022 — during the convoy itself — Chief Justice Richard Wagner gave a series of public comments that should disqualify him from hearing this case. He called the Freedom Convoy the "start of anarchy." He said protesters had taken Ottawa residents "hostage."
These were not off-the-cuff remarks. They were made deliberately, publicly, at a time when the convoy was a live political controversy and the Emergencies Act was being invoked against the very people he was condemning. In any reasonable reading of judicial ethics, a judge who has publicly prejudged the character and conduct of the parties in a case — using inflammatory, legally loaded language like "anarchy" and "hostage" — has an obvious conflict.
Canadian Frontline Nurses (CFN) and member Kristen Nagle filed a formal request in March asking Wagner to recuse himself, citing "reasonable apprehension of bias." On Wednesday, Wagner declined — through the court's registrar, rather than issuing his own public ruling — claiming his 2022 comments were unrelated to the Emergencies Act itself.
The registrar's letter reads: "Chief Justice Wagner has advised that he did not, at any time, either directly or indirectly, comment on the Emergencies Act, RSC 1985, c 22 (4th Supp) or matters at issue in the proceedings."
This is a technicality. Wagner didn't use the words "Emergencies Act" in his 2022 comments. But he prejudged the people the Act was used against — declaring them anarchists who held a city hostage. Pretending that's irrelevant to a case about whether using the Act against those same people was justified is a stretch that wouldn't pass the smell test in a first-year law course.
What the Liberals Are Actually Trying to Do
Let's be clear about what this appeal is: the Carney Liberal government is asking the Supreme Court to overturn two adverse rulings and declare that the Trudeau government acted legally when it froze bank accounts, seized trucks, and suspended civil liberties of peaceful — if disruptive — protesters. They are doing this not because there is new law to interpret, but because losing this case in the courts of record is politically and legally embarrassing.
If the Supreme Court sides with the Liberals, it would validate the most sweeping use of emergency powers in modern Canadian history and set a precedent that future governments — Liberal or otherwise — can invoke those same powers against protests they find inconvenient. Every future protest movement in Canada would operate under that shadow.
That is what is at stake. Not just accountability for 2022, but the future of dissent in this country.
Why This Matters in Carney's Canada
Mark Carney did not invoke the Emergencies Act — Trudeau did. But Carney has made no move to withdraw the appeal. His Liberal government is spending public resources defending that invocation in the Supreme Court. He is continuing Trudeau's legal fight to retroactively justify the freezing of Canadians' bank accounts for political protest.
That tells you everything you need to know about this government's relationship to civil liberties.
Now add the Chief Justice's refusal to step aside. Wagner was appointed to the Supreme Court by Stephen Harper in 2012 but elevated to Chief Justice by Justin Trudeau in 2017. He made politically charged public statements condemning the convoy movement. He is now refusing to remove himself from a case where those statements are directly relevant — a case brought by the very government whose actions he was defending with his words.
Canadians watching this unfold have every right to ask: Is the fix in?
The Liberal government is appealing two court rulings that found the Emergencies Act invocation was illegal. The Chief Justice presiding over that appeal publicly called the protesters "anarchists" in 2022 — and now refuses to step aside. If this is what judicial independence looks like in Carney's Canada, it's time Canadians started asking hard questions about who our institutions actually serve.