Despite numerous claims to the contrary, the judge who headed the Emergency Public Order Commission (POEC), which investigated the federal government’s invocation of the emergency law to end Freedom Convoy protests last year, is not related to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
High-profile social media accounts sympathetic to the protests have claimed that Judge Paul S. Rouleau was the brother-in-law of Suzette Trudeau, Pierre Elliot Trudeau’s older sister – falsely suggesting he is related by marriage to the current prime minister is.
Many online posts took advantage of the alleged relationship to suggest that Rouleau’s role on the commission represented a conflict of interest, an attempt to discredit his final report released on Friday, which saw fit for the government to pass legislation to end the three-week protests asserted the deadlocked Ottawa.
Rouleau has a history of Liberal Party ties, including a family connection to former Prime Minister Jean Chretien, but the POEC commissioner is not related to the Trudeau family.
In fact, Suzette Trudeau was married to a Montreal dentist named Pierre Rouleau, who had no sibling named Paul.
The erroneous claim was further complicated by the fact that there was a judge at the Federal Court of Canada named Paul C. Rouleau of Cornwall, Ontario who died in 2007. He had sons named Pierre and Paul Jr.
An apparent misinterpretation of these facts led to what appeared to be the first online post claiming a familial relationship, published back in December.
The POEC Commissioner grew up in the Vanier neighborhood of Ottawa and is the son of Dr. Roger Rouleau, who once served as the city’s coroner, died in 1973 at the age of 52. Paul S. Rouleau has no brother named Pierre. His two brothers, Jean and Guy, are both doctors in Montreal.
Other online claims that Rouleau made donations to the Liberal Party of Canada appear to be based on data from Elections Canada showing a number of contributions from another Paul Rouleau, who lives in Port Colborne, Ontario. Among them was a $400 donation in December 2022, when the POEC commissioner was writing his report on the emergency law.
In fact, the commissioner has lived in an upscale Toronto neighborhood since 1993 and has never lived in Port Colborne. There is no record of him making a donation to the Liberal Party since becoming a judge in 2002. However, records from Elections Canada show that Rouleau’s wife, Julie, made a $100 donation in 2006 to Gerard Kennedy, the contender for the federal Liberal leadership.
After graduating from law school, Rouleau worked in the office of Liberal Prime Minister John Turner before pursuing his legal career.
Rouleau’s aunt Jacqueline married into the powerful Desmarais family and her son Andre married France Chretien, daughter of the former Liberal Prime Minister.
Rouleau was appointed Justice of the Ontario Supreme Court in 2002 under the administration of then Prime Minister Chretien. He was later appointed to the Ontario Court of Appeals by the government of former Prime Minister Paul Martin, and in 2014 was appointed Deputy Justice of the Yukon Supreme Court under Stephen Harper’s Conservatives.
The Trudeau administration appointed him an associate justice on the supreme courts of Nunavut and the Northwest Territories in 2017 and last year elected him to head the commission of inquiry required by the emergency law.
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