MONTREAL — An unprecedented yearlong “free speech” frame-up trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, two spokespersons for the 2022 truckers’ Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa, ended Sept. 13. Justice Heather Perkins-McVey has six months to deliver her verdict. If convicted they could face up to 10 years in prison.
Lich and Barber were arrested at the massive Ottawa protest against job-threatening COVID mandates on Feb. 17, 2022, two days after Liberal Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked, for the first time ever, the draconian Emergencies Act. It allowed him to send in 3,000 cops to break up the convoy protest. He said the protest had created a “national public order emergency.”
In January a federal court ruled that Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act was illegal because it violated democratic freedoms guaranteed in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
Many other convoy participants face charges. On Sept. 10 in a Lethbridge, Alberta, courtroom packed with their supporters, Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert, participants in a February 2022 two-week convoy solidarity protest at the Coutts, Alberta, Canada-U.S. border crossing, received six-and-a-half-year prison sentences from Justice David Labrenz.
Last month a 12-person jury found the two guilty of possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose and public mischief resulting in damages of over 5,000 Canadian dollars ($3,700). The jury acquitted them of the more serious frame-up charge of conspiracy to murder police, which was based on false testimony by cop undercover agents who posed as Freedom Convoy participants.
Labrenz took almost two hours to justify his sentencing in a political address, saying the length of the sentences was meant to deter others from interfering with Canada’s critical infrastructure. He called the Freedom Convoy protest “an attack on the rule of law.”
Olienick and Carbert have been held in prison since their arrests. With credit for time served, they face another two years behind bars. Both intend to appeal their convictions and sentences.
A separate jury found three other Coutts protesters guilty of mischief. Their sentencing is due Sept. 27.
One of them, Alex van Herk, was in the courtroom when Olienick and Carbert were sentenced. “I believe there is a lot of political pressure still involved, even in the decisions today,” he told the press.