MONTREAL — Lawyers representing Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, two of the main spokespeople in the 2022 truckers’ Freedom Convoy, delivered closing arguments in an Ottawa courtroom Aug. 23. Lich and Barber’s trial began last September. Their arguments centered on defense of the right to free speech and to protest.
Lich, a former leader of the Alberta-based Maverick Party, and Barber, the owner of a small trucking company in Saskatchewan, are accused of mischief, intimidation and counseling others to break the law, charges that could mean 10 years in prison. Prosecutors charged them as “co-conspirators.”
They were arrested Feb. 17, 2022, two days before the Canadian government sent 3,000 heavily armed cops into downtown Ottawa to break up the three-week camp-in thousands of truckers and their supporters had set up in the capital around Parliament Hill. They were demanding the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau end COVID vaccine restrictions that threatened their jobs.
The cop mobilization, one of the largest in Canadian history, was carried out under the draconian Emergencies Act, invoked by Trudeau Feb. 14 on the pretext that the protest was a threat to public order and “national security.” Over 200 participants were arrested.
Last January a federal judge ruled that Ottawa’s use of the Emergencies Act against the truckers was illegal and unconstitutional, saying it violated democratic freedoms guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The government’s lawyers seek to “criminalize the words and actions” of Lich and Barber, defense lawyer Lawrence Greenspon said, when they had in fact consistently urged peaceful behavior and cooperation with the police.
The prosecution claims Lich’s call for participants to “hold the line” as the police prepared for their assault encouraged the truckers to defy police orders to leave. But she was arrested two days before the police action, Greenspon said, when “there was no such line. Lich’s rallying call was simply encouragement for protesters “not to give up.”
Later this month government lawyers will present their final arguments. Justice Heather Perkins-McVey then has up to six months to rule.
Other frame-up trials underway
Prosecutors summoned Pat King, another prominent Freedom Convoy participant, to Ottawa from his Alberta home where he has been under house arrest for over two years. He surrendered and was imprisoned in Ottawa July 31, charged with violating his bail conditions by posting information about the case on social media.
He was again released on bail Aug. 9, but slapped with a gag order barring him from use of social media “in all forms.” An outrageous court order says no one else is allowed to post on social media on his behalf. King cannot participate in public protests nor communicate with Lich, Barber or other convoy leaders.
Bail conditions for King, Lich, Barber and many other convoy participants facing charges have been extraordinarily restrictive, designed to shut them up, break their fighting spirit and as a warning to anyone else inclined to publicly protest government policies.
King’s trial on numerous criminal charges similar to those lodged against Lich and Barber concluded at the end of July. A verdict in his case is expected on Oct. 4.
In another Freedom Convoy case, government prosecutors were forced to drop charges Aug. 2 against Benjamin Spicer after Justice Timothy Lipson ruled that his arrest Feb. 19, 2022, during the police assault was unlawful.
“There is no evidence that Mr. Spicer did anything in violation of any law that warranted him being detained on the ground and being subjected to physical force,” Lipson wrote. “I found that there were multiple breaches of Mr. Spicer’s Charter rights, and each breach is in my view serious.”
“Frame-ups and ‘conspiracy’ charges that criminalize the spoken and written word have long been used by Canada’s capitalist rulers to railroad working-class fighters and union activists to prison,” Katy LeRougetel, the Communist League candidate in the Sept. 16 federal by-election in Montreal, told the Militant. “The unions and all defenders of democratic freedoms should demand the end of the Freedom Convoy trials and the dropping of all charges against convoy participants.”