Project Natterjack - the Internal Review of the RCMPs 2022 Response to the Freedom Convoy.
Both the Emergencies Act & the Ontario shutdown and stay-at-home orders used by the RCMP to justify their activities during the 2020 - 2022 "pandemic" have been ruled "unconstitutional." So Now What?
In 2021 and early 2022, Canadian government officials, often with the assistance of legacy media outlets funded by Canada Revenue Service (CRA) and Heritage Canada grants and tax credits worth hundreds of millions of dollars, engaged in a "5G warfare" campaign, “leaking” information, encouraging cyberattacks and organizing social influencer campaigns designed to influence RCMP activities.
The campaign was designed to pressure the RCMP and other domestic police agencies into framing ongoing “antigovernmental protests” against the Covid-19 lockdowns as “ideologically motivated violent extremism.”
Analysts were flooded with hourly briefing demands, rushed into producing assessments, and in some cases, reports were misattributed or distorted to fit political expectations.
Eventually, the RCMP caved to government pressure, providing the justification for the Trudeau Liberals to invoke the “Emergencies Act,” essentially a declaration of “martial law,” on February 14th, 2022. The declaration shut down protests in Ottawa, Coutts Alberta, and elsewhere and led to the arrest of dozens of protesters across Canada.
But the RCMP, uncomfortable with the pressure to find illegal acts where none existed, wrote a report on what happened during that period.
Commissioned in March 2022, the report was finally released under a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request in 2024 under the title, “Project NATTERJACK - National After-Action Review into the RCMP's response to the 2022 Freedom Convoy.”
The Freedom Convoy began as a protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates but soon grew into a broader antigovernmental movement, paralyzing downtown Ottawa for weeks and blocking critical border points in early 2022.
The protests prompted the Canadian government to invoke the Emergencies Act, granting police extraordinary powers beginning February 14th, 2022 in an effort to shut down the protests.
The government’s decision was initially justified by Justice Paul Rouleau’s February 17th, 2023 Report of the Public Inquiry into the 2022 Public Order Emergency, which concluded that the federal government was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act, even as it also detailed the significant failures in policing and coordination at all levels of government that led to the emergency.
But in January 2024, Federal Court trial judge Richard Mosely ruled differently. He said that the Canadian governments use of the Emergencies Act to shut down the Canadian Freedom Convoy protests in 2022 was unjustified and violated Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The case (Federal court file No. T-382-22 ) was initiated by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association (CCLA), the Canadian Constitution Foundation (CCF) and partially funded through the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom (JCCF).
Mosely’s judgement superseded the Rouleau, inquiry which is as it should be under Canadian law.
The Feb 12th, 2022 ABC News (Australia) on YouTube post, “Ottawa’s Freedom Convoy protests’ global implications | ABC News,” provides and overview of what the rest of the world thought about Canada on the eve of the Emergencies Act.
Project Natterjack, as the Royal Canadian Mounted Police’s (RCMP) called its internal after-action review, aimed to chronicle what happened during that period, evaluate the RCMP’s performance, identify operational shortcomings, and provide recommendations to improve future responses involving “large-scale public order events.“
The 92-page report was led by retired RCMP Assistant Commissioner Eric Slinn, with support from RCMP’s National Program Evaluation Services, Internal Audit, Evaluation and Review Branch, and the National Office of Investigative Standards and Practices, an internal RCMP office that provides expertise, oversight, and consultation for major investigations.
The core of Project Natterjack was a survey of 1,641 RCMP personnel and interviews with key RCMP, Ottawa Police Service (OPS), and Ontario Provincial Police (OPP) personnel.
Project Natterjack’s key findings included:
Intelligence Failures: Poor intelligence coordination led to delays, confusion and duplication of efforts.
Some officers at the Coutts, Alberta protests were unaware of threats to harm police until after the blockade ended, with some learning of threats through media rather than internal channels.
The report highlighted an overreliance on legacy and social media for intelligence, with inadequate internal dissemination. There was no effective governance structure for the RCMP’s intelligence program, and the absence of a “National Criminal Intelligence Committee,” to facilitate information collection and intelligence distribution among law enforcement agencies, was noted.
Pressure from political leaders to frame the protests as “ideologically motivated violent extremism” raised concerns about politicization, potentially skewing intelligence priorities.
Operational Challenges: Mobilization efforts in Ottawa were described as “chaotic,” with insufficient equipment, inadequate training, and unclear leadership direction.
General duty RCMP members lacked public order or crowd-control training, and no such training was provided before the convoy events.
Officers faced exceptionally long workdays, with some sleeping in their offices due to resource strain. The Ottawa training facility was unusable due to poor air quality, leading to canceled recertification courses and a backlog of expired certifications.
Political Pressure and the Emergencies Act: Officers reported feeling “immense pressure” from government officials, with the response perceived as “highly politicized,” particularly in Ottawa, where senior officials expected the RCMP to resolve blockades using their new powers.
The invocation of the Emergencies Act caused discomfort among some officers, who felt unclear about the new powers and their application.
The report noted that the Act’s tools were critical for timely resolution but raised concerns about officers’ understanding of their authority.
Coordination with Partners: The review emphasized the need for better integration with law enforcement partners like the OPS and OPP.
Interviews with senior OPS and OPP leaders provided candid feedback on improving RCMP’s role in integrated policing environments.
The review underscored the RCMP’s struggle to balance operational independence with political pressures, particularly under the Trudeau government’s demands for frequent briefings, which hindered intelligence work.
Critics, including posts on X, argue the politicization of the governments response during the Freedom Convoy, coupled with the obvious 5G warfare and propaganda efforts noted throughout the period, risked Charter freedoms like peaceful assembly and reflecting ongoing public and officer unease with the Emergencies Act’s use.
And the critics turned out to be right.
Federal Court trial judge Richard Mosely’s January 2024 ruling that the Canadian government’s use of the Emergencies Act was ”unconstitutional” was just the beginning.
In April 2025, Ontario Court of Appeal Justice Peter Lauwers ruled in favor of defendant Randy Hillier in the “Hillier v. Ontario” case.
Lauwers found that peaceful assembly and political protest are “integral to a functioning democracy,” and that the effect of Ontario’s shutdown and stay-at-home orders enacted during the 2020 - 2022 pandemic were to “stifle” assemblies protesting those bans.
Hillier faced several charges for organizing or hosting protests against pandemic measures while the provincial rules were in effect in the spring of 2021.
As outlined in the April 7th, 2025 CTV News post, “COVID-19 rules barring protests in 2021 were unconstitutional: Ontario’s top court,” Ontario’s top court ruled that:
… provincial restrictions on gatherings that prohibited peaceful protests for several weeks during the COVID-19 pandemic were unconstitutional.
As outlined in the March 28th, 2022 City News on YouTube post, “Ontario MPP Randy Hillier arrested,” Hillier was also charged for participation in the Freedom Convoy protests in Ottawa.
He faced nine criminal charges related to the protests, including assaulting a peace officer, mischief, counselling others to commit mischief, and resisting or obstructing a peace officer.
In November 2024, an Ontario Superior Court judge stayed all charges due to “excessive court delays violating his right to a trial” under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (known as a Jordan application).
As of September 24, 2025, the appeal remains unresolved, with Hillier publicly stating he is still awaiting the Ontario Court of Appeal’s decision.
The case will likely never be resolved.
After all, the legislation governing police actions during the pandemic, both the Emergencies Act and the various Ontario provincial government stay-at-home orders used by the RCMP to justify their activities during the 2020 - 2022 pandemic, have been found to be unconstitutional.
So what happens now?
People without the resources available to an ex-MMP or without support from major Canadian activist groups are still awaiting their day in court to defend themselves against laws and edicts those courts have already found to be unconstitutional.
At some point, someone is going to bring suit against any duly deputized agent of the law who enforced those “unconstitutional” edicts.
Canada’s Supreme Court recently affirmed in the 2024 case Canada (Attorney General) v. Power that the Crown is “not immune from liability for damages” when it enacts “unconstitutional legislation that infringes upon Charter rights.“
The decision established a high threshold for these claims, requiring that the law was “clearly unconstitutional,” or that its enactment was done in “bad faith or an abuse of power.”
But the law is there, just waiting for an ambitious lawyer to build a practice around.
How will government bureaucrats, the RCMP and other organizations involved in enforcing the pandemic lockdowns and the Emergencies Act legislation justify their actions when the court comes for them?
They’ll certainly need something more than a Project Natterjack. Stay tuned.
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Canadians are waiting for the answer, a liberal government has not addressed their terror on society.