Legal victory! Calgary protest injunction challenge successful

For weeks, the city of Calgary was under a broad, sweeping injunction, acquired at the behest of activist Mayor Jyoti Gondek and city council, which limited park use, use of amplification, honking, the blocking of roads and sidewalks during marches, and a series of other freedoms.

Ultimately, the injunction sought to limit people’s capacity to protest vaccine mandates and government overreach.

Under the injunction, we witnessed the glaringly selective enforcement solely against freedom protests, including the arrest of an independent journalist covering one of the rallies, while other groups openly defied the injunction and were left unfettered by authorities.

In late April, The Democracy Fund, thanks to your donations at ProtestLawsuit.com, hired Chad Williamson of Williamson Law to launch a legal challenge against the Charter-infringing injunction. 

We joined Chad at that time to discuss the basis for the challenge. The legal challenge was filed on Friday of that week, and by the following Tuesday morning the City of Calgary had dropped the injunction entirely.

We spoke to Chad Williamson once again to break down the apparent impact of The Democracy Fund’s injunction challenge, having ultimately succeeded in ending injunction before it was even heard by the courts.

We also discussed some of the troubling systematic issues and untoward legal practices that have been emerging from some government lawyers since the onset of COVID-19.

While the challenge against this injunction succeeded in pressuring Calgary city council to drop the injunction before it got to court, there are still significant costs involved with putting together such a strong challenge. If you want to help pay for the challenge which saw the injunction undone, you can make a tax receipt eligible donation at ProtestLawsuit.com.