Federal Court upholds Trudeau’s prorogation of Parliament

A Federal Court judge has decided in favour of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to prorogue Parliament on Jan. 6.

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A Federal Court judge has decided in favour of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to prorogue Parliament on Jan. 6.

Chief Justice Paul Crampton, the Federal Court judge who expedited and oversaw the case, decided on Thursday the applicants failed to demonstrate prorogation was a “stratagem designed specifically to interrupt the business of Parliament” or prevent “a motion for non-confidence in the government.”

Chief Justice Crampton’s decision acknowledged that the decision to prorogue Parliament was one “in service of the interests of the Liberal Party” rather than Canadians at writ.

“It is not possible to disentangle the partisan reasons from the other reasons given by the Prime Minister,” Crampton conceded.

However, Crampton also decided that “it is not the Court’s role to question the wisdom or merits of those decisions.”

Remaining sympathetic to the spirit of the challenge, Crampton’s decision likewise acknowledged the legal precedent established by a U.K. court decision that ruled former prime minister Boris Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament in 2019 was unlawful. Crampton acknowledged that it “appears to be the only case in the history of the Commonwealth where a court interfered with the exercise of the Crown prerogative to prorogue Parliament.”

However, Crampton went on to further explain the U.K. Supreme Court’s decision was underpinned by circumstances the U.K. courts said “have never arisen before and are unlikely to ever arise again,” referring to the Brexit crisis.

The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms—a legal group representing the applicants in their challenge to prorogation—felt the circumstances in the Miller II case were sufficiently analogous to the Trump tariff threats against Canada.

Crampton remained unconvinced—not necessarily of the differences between Brexit and the Trump tariff threats, but of the symmetry suggested by the JCCF between the Canadian and British legal systems.

“The principal difference is that the UK does not have a written constitution,” Crampton wrote in his decision. “As a result, the UK’s system is one of Parliamentary supremacy, in contrast to Canada’s system of constitutional supremacy.”

On the issue of constitutionality, Crampton also remained steadfast in his decision to uphold prorogation.

The JCCF brought two constitutional challenges to prorogation: that it contravened sections 3 and 5 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

Section 3 guarantees each Canadian citizen the right to vote and to run in elections.

Crampton’s decision rejected that prorogation could ever lead to a prime minister being liable to contravention of the Charter on account of a previous Federal Court of Appeal technicality that it is the “Governor General that called the election, not the Prime Minister.”

Section 5, meanwhile, guarantees there “shall be a sitting of Parliament and of each legislature at least once every twelve months.”

Crampton did not find the JCCF’s challenge to prorogation on account of Section 5 was a proper reading of the Charter. Section 5, he argued, does not “regulate the prorogation power. It simply articulates a temporal limit to any adjournment, prorogation or dissolution of Parliament.”

The judge additionally acknowledged that the applicants—and presumably, by extension, many Canadians—might find his decision “troubling,” citing the executive branch “increasingly drawing functions away from the legislative branch.”