What happened
On 16 January 2026 the Federal Court of Appeal released Attorney General of Canada et al. v. Canadian Civil Liberties Association et al., 2026 FCA 6, unanimous reasons jointly authored by Chief Justice de Montigny, Laskin JA and Mactavish JA, with no dissent. Six dockets were before the court, A-73-24 as the lead, and it was heard in Toronto on 4 and 5 February 2025, so the reasons were eleven months reserved. There is also a plain-language summary.
The result stands where it stood. The invocation was unreasonable and ultra vires (para 8). The Regulations infringed section 2(b) of the Charter and were not saved by section 1, being overbroad because they caught peaceable protesters. Sections 5 and 6 of the Economic Order infringed section 8 and were not saved either. The Attorney General's appeals in A-73-24, A-74-24 and A-75-24 are dismissed without costs, the interlocutory appeals A-29-23 and A-30-23 with costs, and A-76-24 with costs, that last one being the Canadian Frontline Nurses' own appeal on standing rather than the government's (paras 506 to 508). No part of the Federal Court's judgment is varied or set aside.
What it changes
The section 8 reasoning. Justice Mosley had held that both subsection 2(1) of the Economic Order, the freezing power itself, and sections 5 and 6, the information-sharing provisions, breached section 8. The Court of Appeal disagrees about subsection 2(1). Section 8 protects privacy, and "it does not protect against restrictions on the enjoyment of property" (para 416). Frozen-account holders' "privacy rights were not affected, as their confidential financial information was not disclosed to anyone". On that reasoning subsection 2(1) authorised no search or seizure at all.
Only sections 5 and 6 breach section 8, meaning the disclosure of banking information to the RCMP and CSIS. The court agrees with the court below on minimal impairment ("We agree with the Federal Court", para 464) but supplies its own route there: section 8 carries an internal justificatory element, so a breach of it "leaves little room for upholding the law under section 1" (paras 465 to 466). The "most egregious problem" was that banking information of suspected offenders could be shared with the RCMP and CSIS "without a warrant or any form of prior authorization" (para 470).
So the constitutional violation is the data leaving the bank, not the account being locked. On this reasoning a frozen account is a harm the search-and-seizure guarantee does not reach, because losing access to your money is a property interest and the guarantee protects privacy.
What it does not change
The remedy is declaratory, exactly as it was. No money returned, no damages, no compensation mechanism, no declaration varied.
Set the clock against it. The Act was invoked on 14 February 2022 and revoked on 23 February, so the power lived nine days. Inside that window the RCMP passed information on approximately 57 entities to financial institutions and approximately 257 accounts were frozen (2024 FC 42, paras 43 and 47, a litigation-disclosure figure rather than a February 2022 count). The first judicial ruling came 23 months later. This one comes 47 months later. The power was exercised at once and unilaterally, and it was complete and unwound before any court was seized of it. Review is slow, retrospective, and can only ever end in a declaration that it should not have happened. For someone whose account was frozen, the courts offer vindication and never restitution.
The Act stands unamended. No party challenged its constitutional validity, it can be invoked again, and these declarations bind no future Cabinet prospectively.
Section 2(c) is left open. The Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Constitution Foundation cross-appealed seeking a declaration on freedom of peaceful assembly that Mosley J had refused. The court declines to address it and dismisses the cross-appeals without costs, adding that "we should not be understood to be agreeing with the Federal Court's analysis of the paragraph 2(c) issue" (para 505).
The freezing power itself was not held unconstitutional. Nothing here speaks to bank or payment-processor conduct outside an emergency, or to the standing anti-money-laundering regimes under which accounts are frozen routinely. A further appeal to the Supreme Court of Canada is available.
Context
We covered the invocation as it happened and the Federal Court's ruling two years after it. This is the appeal from that judgment. The Court of Appeal parts from the court below in three further places without changing the outcome: it rejects the argument that Mosley J applied de facto correctness review (para 164), it refuses to let a candid remark at para 370 of his reasons taint the result because "it is not the decision of the Federal Court that we are reviewing, but that of the GIC" (para 184), and it applies correctness to the Charter questions, following Société des casinos du Québec, 2024 SCC 13 (paras 296 to 297).
The mechanism the first of those posts described is untouched. A bank balance is a claim on an intermediary that can be made unavailable on instruction, and the court reviewing the instruction arrives years later. That is the case for holding your own keys, and also its price, because nobody can restore a key they do not hold either.