September 8, 2023 - 5:00pm
Canada
This week, the trial of Canada’s two main leaders of the trucker protests began. The lead prosecutor has argued that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber “crossed the line” and “committed multiple crimes” while insisting that this trial will not be about the truckers’ political views. The pair face charges including mischief, counselling others to commit mischief, intimidation, and obstructing the police. They face a maximum of 10 years in prison should they be convicted.
The trial is just beginning and has so far featured testimony from Crown witnesses. As is common for criminal trials in Canada, it is not overseen by a jury and will be ruled upon by a judge only. The facts of the case are not in dispute — the protests and its leaders heavily documented their experience and spread it widely through social media. The issue at stake is whether their actions were criminal. Lich and Barber maintain that they were not seeking to commit crime.
Instead, they were exercising their Charter right of peaceful protest to oppose the years-long Covid-19 vaccine mandates. As Lich and Barber’s lawyers explained: “We do not expect this to be the trial of the Freedom Convoy. The central issue will be whether the actions of two of the organisers of a peaceful protest should warrant criminal sanction.” Nonetheless, the Canadian media has done much to paint the peaceful 2022 winter protest as violent, commonly using hyperbolic words such as “occupation” and “sedition” to describe the event.
Yet the demands of the truckers were fundamentally peaceful, asking for a return to the pre-pandemic status quo. Indeed, these demands were not even out of line with multiple jurisdictions at that point — for example, the United Kingdom had dropped the majority of its Covid protocols — and yet its main leaders are facing time in prison.
The Freedom Convoy was the high watermark, and for a time, many (including myself) were convinced that the truckers would finally bring the government to the table. Instead, the protestors were completely rebuffed and, eventually, violently quashed. What was meant to be an intrinsic part of the democratic process — that is, the protection of fundamental minority rights and open discourse — was replaced with undemocratic tactics involving political and physical force, trials presided over by judges, and perpetuated by both the media and politicians.
This trial will no doubt have a chilling effect on future protests against the next bureaucratic overreach, the frontier of which seems to be on the limits of free expression. The truth is that Canada can only thrive when it respects the rights and opinions of all its citizens, offering venues for an airing of differences. But with no venues remaining, the only way forward seems to be the criminalisation of reasonable deviations from the party line, which means a less peaceful and cohesive nation. This future is nothing short of frightening.
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SubscribeUnder the criminal code in Canada, mischief has extremely broad interpretation. I can see them being convicted of this charge, but to spend even one day in jail would be a gross miscarriage of Justice. No one ever gets jail time for mischief. I’m not holding my breath though because the entire incident was a gross miscarriage of Justice.
What even is the definition of mischief? The fact that Canada has such a crime is baffling, it seems no different to China’s illegalization of “rumours” or “troublemaking”.
I’ll just add a little context here. On the very night Trudeau invoked the emergency act, eco terrorists committed $2 mill in damage during a truly terrifying incident at a work site for the Coastal Gas Link project in British Columbia, a 100% native owned pipeline project.
The protestors damaged equipment at the site and terrorized workers, even shooting flare guns at workers hiding inside a truck. No one has ever been arrested for this incident and the regime media has bloody well ignored it.
This terrorism has been taking place from day one of the project. It is inconceivable that police don’t know who the leaders are – no one is that incompetent – but there has been little effort to investigate the ongoing assaults and no one seems to care.
Tell me there’s not two tiers of frickin justice in this country. Just thinking about it makes my blood boil. I want to scream obscenities at these feckless politicians.
Scream at the cowardly judiciary as well. A lawsuit against the travel mandate was dismissed as being ‘moot’ because the government dropped the mandate a week before the hearing. I watched the government press conference and the smug minister said ‘we may bring it back.’ The federal court judge decided that it would be a waste of resources to hear the case. This is a calculated misinterpretation of the law by a cowardly judge afraid to make a decision with political implications. The travel ban was a ban of mobility rights explicitly protected by the constitution. The lead plaintiff was a former Canadian premier who is a signatory to the Charter of Rights and Freedoms the constitutional document that supposedly protect those rights. This is a serious case taken by serious people. Canada is a vast country – it is over 7000 km from Vancouver BC to St. John’s NFLD. This was a serious and unprecedented violation of constitutional rights – but the court thinks it would be a waste of resources to hear it. So where are we? We have ideological politicians elected by a third of voters passing brutal laws for an improper purpose, if you protest peacefully you could be in jail for 10 years, if you go to court you will wait years, spend a half million in fees, only to have a coward on the bench afraid to make a ruling. What is left for people to do?
”Mootness” is pure judicial avoidance in this case. The dispute may no longer be alive, but it’s very obviously capable of repetition. When they feel like it, the Canadian courts are quite capable of inserting themselves into contentious disputes (abortion, same sex marriage, Quebec secession, euthanasia, etc).
The Canadian constitution is a joke. Section 1 basically gives govt an unlimited free pass to ignore the constitution.
1. The Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Many of us in the US are deeply disappointed by all this. The Canadians are supposed to be, if nothing else, at least reasonable. We never expected such Mao-ist shenanigans.
I used to think Canada was a great country. Got brainwashed as a child by Sgt Preston, I guess. The truckers treatment by the government is unconscionable.
Yes, I nearly immigrated there in 80s.
Based on Canadian High Commission brochure it was a paradise in comparison to 80s uk.
Much higher wages and cheap housing.
Great skiing as well.
I still can not comprehend how it turned into semi-stalinist dictatorships?
I have to imagine there are a great many things that you cannot comprehend…
Just Stop Oil block the King’s Highways all the time. The British police offer them cups of tea and have a nice chat with them. Anyone who tries to get past them is arrested.
Canadian protesters block a few roads and they are systematically debanked, arrested and incarcerated.
I wonder why they are treated so differently?
That’s a rhetorical question. Of course we know why. Depends on whether the regime fundamentally agrees with the concerns of the protesters. It has nothing to do with “equity” of justice.
It’s terrible what’s happening to these people. A new totalitarianism is on the rise in Anglo countries where every thought or action not prescribed or approved of by the establishment is labelled ‘right-wing’. This allows government agencies to act with impunity as we see in the farcical Donald Trump trials and the Proud Boy’s sentencing of 22(!) years for ‘participating’ in an event in which he did not attend. The convoy truckers are another victim of this authoritarian regime.
There seems to be a pattern across these countries too:
a narrative of oppression with which to browbeat the general public (black slaves, First Nations, Australian aborigines etc.)a massive reparations effort that conveniently allows for easy transfer of money and political power (anti-racism, The Voice, BLM)the appointment of political commissars in public institution (DEI officers)indoctrinating school children so that they become fearful and ‘guilty’ adults (LGBQT dogma (men can be women etc.), climate change alarmism, ‘decolonized’ curricula)dislocating people from their natural heritage: (demonizing religion, history, virtue, strength and beauty)increasing state power by ‘solving’ the same chaotic conditions governments create thus perpetuating themselves (immigration, crime, drugs)uniparty politics where there is no longer any difference between parties (one party simply carries on the plans of the previous party – Donald Trump and Brexit being the obvious examples of where this pattern was broken)
It is becoming increasingly clear that some kind of regime change is needed before trust in politicians and public institutions is completely eroded.
“sentencing of 22(!) years for ‘participating’ in an event in which he did not attend”
Are you really this dim? Even a child knows that you don’t have to pull the trigger to be guilty of murder.
As for the rest of your incoherent mumbling, perhaps some remedial English composition lessons would help?
So when are you being sentenced?
Sorry about that, CS. When my comment posted all the bullet points I put in were removed, hence the somewhat garbled format.
Your last sentence is pretty funny to me. I have a Masters in English and used to teach composition to college students.
Whatever his role in January 6, 22 years is still a long time for non-attendance of a political protest, especially considering how quickly were released soon after BLM marches which also yielded more general carnage. Regardless, I personally don’t want to live in a world where people are given harsher sentences merely because of their political views. Imagine if one day the words you posted here caused some political upheaval, and you got served 22 years in prison.
Trudeau said it’s crucial that protesters be allowed to speak up.
“Canadians are watching very closely. Obviously everyone in China should be allowed to express themselves (and) should be allowed to share their perspectives, and indeed protest,” he said.
But only if they agree with him, of course.
As we are beginning to see, all people should be allowed to speak, to express themselves, to share perspectives… but that does not mean you will be allowed to be heard. A person’s right to speak does not include that the speaker has the right for others to hear that speech.
This is the Canadian version of the persecution of J6 protesters. The goal is to intimidate anyone on the conservative / libertarian side from ever protesting again. Fun fact: – over 83 churches were vandalized in reaction to the (bogus) residential mass grave stories. Many were burned to the ground. Justin Trudeau said this was wrong but ‘understandable.’ No one has ever been charged with an offence for these crimes. Fun fact 2: shortly after the convoy ended climate change protesters attacked a pipeline construction camp – threatened workers with machetes – set booby traps for police – and caused $1M in damage to the site. No one has been charged for that either. Progressives seem to think that using politicized prosecutions will silence opposition. I personally think it will just encourage direct action. The vandalism of cameras in the UK comes to mind. I would also like to point out that EV chargers are also terribly vulnerable to vandalism. A squeeze of epoxy glue in the charging handle would render it permanently inoperable. In the event this useless and environmentally damaging technology is forced on Canadians by progressive zealots (as currently planned) I would remind my fellow Canadians that protesting progressive policies is now illegal – and so is vandalising progressive technology. Instead you will just have to take the knee and submit to your blue haired, nose pierced, overlords.
I think the limits of free expression are but a part of what is at stake here. The trucking protests were closed down by depriving the truckers access to their own money. These measures demonstrate Canada is not a liberal democracy. Those who hold differently need to use a dictionary.
They are charged with “mischief”? Only in Canada. It probably carries the death penalty… except, this is Canada, so, life imprisonment with community service consisting of public service messages reminding Canadians not to be naughty and peacefully assemble to protest the abridgment of your rights.
“As is common for criminal trials in Canada, it is not overseen by a jury and will be ruled upon by a judge only”
I am thankful I was not born in Canada. What a fall for once well-run colony.
“I am thankful I was not born in Canada.”
I’m sure all Canadians share that sentiment.
And Canada hasn’t been a colony for 150 years, whatever your Kipling, empire fantasies may be.
Ironic, but a Kipling poem from 1911 about the danger to to Britain of the cessation of Big Steamers arriving is relevant today. By a complete coincidence, or perhaps Kipling was far smarter and more prescient than you give him credit for being. In 2 world wars the major aim of Germany was, via U Boats, to stop said Big Steamers arriving. I’ll leave you to figure out why they wanted to do that AND why it so alarmed the British Government, but reading Kipling’s poem may help if you struggle.
Suffice it to say, the effort failed both times and Britain’s Big Steamers have been arriving ever since.
However, in 27 years time, the big steamers or actually their modern equivalent, ARE going to cease arriving. Net Zero is aiming to stop them. Better start stocking up on canned goods – forget the Champagne. Though you could emigrate while the going is good. Canada might welcome you.
Tried to comment on a story about the right to political expression and got censored. Great job, UnHerd….
It is happening all the time.
You say Communism, Maoism etc, you are fine.
But when you say fasc*sm or Naz*sm without asterixing it, you are censored.
Disgusting censorship of woke left.
Unherd?
Total joke, time to go…
Tried commenting on the weekend essay and my comment never appeared. When I last looked, there were only 18 comments so something’s up with that.
Remember the Farm protests in India? Trudeau had the front to lecture the Indian Government on freedom to protest..
He did it again this week at the G20 summit. He even said that “you can’t smear a whole group based on the actions of a few.” Remember how all the people in the convoy protests were transphobes, misogynists, racists, etc? Anyways one of the largest English speaking networks in India ran a 9 minute piece on what a hypocrite Trudeau is. We haven’t ever had a PM with this type of prominence around the world.
If mischief is such a serious offence, Just William must be up for the death penalty.
Much understandable unhappiness about the censoring of comments; so why aren’t the uncivil and downright hostile comments of Champagne Socialist censored? He’s obviously just rattling our chains for the fun of it. And just like an obnoxious kid, his behaviour gets worse every day.
Censoring him would be a kindness to him. Every time I read one of his posts, his unhappiness shines through. If I weren’t an atheist I’d pray for him. I wait for his response. Two can rattle chains, but it seems only one really takes it to heart 🙂
Haha, in my head his monologues sound like Stewie from Family Guy.
Canadians are dumb.
Tell that to Jordan Peterson.
Maybe, but since Brits were most supportive of covid measures in Europe, maybe you should say that Brits are dumber.
Number of covidiots I came across in London was astonishing.
I have to admit that I never thought Brits be so pathetic.
All this talk about “cheese eating surrender monkeys” but then meek compliance with any government idiocy.
Another who thinks the MSM reflects reality. IF in the UK do you NOT remember the uproar over the numbers turning up on the beaches? Just because the MSM and the Covid Cult hogged the airwaves, you have to remember most of us ignored what didn’t suit us. Hence the beach ‘parties’. I loved lockdown because it mean all my family ended up at home and we had a wonderful summer. They all ‘worked from home’. As for masking up, on the two occasions one of the store ‘enforcers’ asked us to put on a mask, we simply replied “We are exempt.” Not one had the nerve to ask why. Sadly the females in the family did get vaccinated. But have so far, not suffered any serious side effects, other than catching COVID one more time than those of us who refused to take part in the largest vaccine trial in history.
And all my posts gone again, nice and polite ones, too. Do you get barred for being downvoted?
I really wonder why I am paying you.
Mine too. I’ve had enough. Does anyone know how to cancel their subscription. I can’t handle the oppressive arbitrary nature of that censorship.
I think it’s an algorithm rather than a person. My comments are often awaiting moderation or disappear only to reappear. Sometimes comments that are visible on my iPad don’t appear on my PC and vice versa.
18 of 43 comments have disappeared. The censors running this site are both thugs and cowards.
Rule of law in Canada is on trial. If this case is not thrown out by the judge with a vigorous wigging of the prosecution, Canada will join the ranks.
Ah, we have an expert on Canadian law with us today! I’m sure we’d all be thrilled to hear the jurisprudence behind this learned opinion!
Come on mods, The Champagne Socialist is posting. I love his posts. He’s just posted claiming to possess imagination, but you aren’t letting me reply! Mind you come to think of it, given his posts, he must have a spectacular imagination if he imagines socialism is to be desired.
Hello
Is this ALSO awaiting moderation? The second coming is likely to arrive before moderation it seems.
Though I guess that makes me a true Unherd reader 😉
I wonder what Trudeau would look like in an orange jumpsuit? I do hope to get judge for myself one day.
The ‘right to peaceful protest’ was always a bit tricky. Whether you call it ‘peaceful protest’ or ‘making ordinary life impossible until your demands are met’ seems to depend a lot on whether you happen to agree with the protesters. Would you be equally favourable to the ‘Freedom Convoy’ if their demands had been to stop burning fossil fuels? Make it illegal to eat meat? Introduce Sharia law? Defund the police? etc.? And how do you determine where to draw the line?
Two years before the trucker protest, native activists blocked railway lines across the country, for about two months. The economic impact was far greater. Yet Trudeau met with them and negotiated a deal. Not one single person was charged with one single crime.
So which would be the right remedy, do you think? Should all activists have the right to block traffic to push through their claims, or should hte native activists have been prosecuted?
You raise legit concerns. How would I feel if some homeless guy decided to make camp in my front yard for three weeks? My patience would wear thin very quickly.
I supported the truckers in Ottawa. I didn’t support the blockades at the US border. These blockades harmed the economy and threatened the jobs of working class people the truckers were supposed to represent.
The Ottawa protest occurred in an area designated for protests. It quickly outgrew this area and lasted much longer than a typical protest.
They broke up the border protests without invoking the emergencies act. IMO they should have broken up the Ottawa protest and sent everyone packing. These people aren’t criminals. They aren’t an ongoing nuisance because they haven’t held additional protests. The criminal charges are legal overreach.
That makes sense – and anyway you clearly know more about this than I do.
Should you have to protest at being forced to take an experimental vaccine or lose your livelihood.
“for about two months”
Nonsense.
Its possible that Trudeau met with them because they were not demanding by force the replacement of the duly elected government of Canada by a weird coalition (including themselves of course!) that was completely anti-constitutional.
Let them rot in jail and serve as a warning to other domestic terrorists.
This folks is an enemy of the people – an ideologue with no grasp of the facts who would jail everyone who disagrees with him.
I wrote another post that the censors at Unherd have decided to eliminate. On the very night Trudeau invoked the Emergrncies Act, eco terrorists attacked a remote job site in British Columbia, for the Coastal Gas Link project, a 100% native owned pipeline project.
They caused $2 mill in damage and terrorized workers there for hours. They even shot a flare gun at workers hiding in a truck. No one has been charged in the incident and the regime media has completely ignored it. Again, this happened the very night Trudeau invoked martial law.
These protests started on day one of the project and are ongoing today. It’s inconceivable that police don’t know who the terrorists are – no one is that incompetent – yet they are allowed to roll on.
Go ahead, keep deluding yourself that you know anything about anything, that you are anything but a narcissistic blowhard devoid of principles.
Toady.
I wonder if he was vaccinated?
Ah, a Dr Mengele fan I see. Inject this experimental vaccine or lose your livelihood. Is that the level Champagne Socialists have sunk to?
“Yet Trudeau met with them [native activists].” Likely more than 50% of the population in Canada agreed with the truckers’ ‘complaint’, yet the Prime Minister disparaged them and failed to have any dialog with them. Really? Plain and simple display of non-representive form of government.
Obviously it depends on whether or not the authorities approve of the viewpoint. Should the protestors that you refer to (all very disruptive) also be facing serious charges without trial by jury, we could say that protestors who overstepped the mark whatever their cause were being treated equally under law. But they’re not, so they aren’t.
Do you agree that the truckers were white supremacists and Nazi-sympathisers?
Or were they working-class people who had delivered goods throughout the COVID epidemic and were worried about their jobs now that the government had decided that their bodies were under government control and the government would decide what could be injected into them?
Are you saying that you can only support protests by people you agree with?
I can support equal treatment under the law.
Correct. This protest was about bodily autonomy. Which is something the token Socialist on here doesn’t seem to be bothered about.
Do you agree that the truckers were white supremacists and N—i-sympathisers?
Or were they working-class people who had delivered goods throughout the COVID epidemic and were worried about their jobs now that the government had decided that their bodies were under government control and the government would decide what would be injected into them?
I believe that they were people who had decided to disregard mandatory health precautions in the middle of a serious epidemic, and who felt that either their comfort or their medical judgement should take precedence over government health policy. The Canadian government may or may not have taken some wrong decisions, but taking those decisions is their job. It would not make Canada safer if everybody was free to ignore any health policies they did not like.
How far the right to ‘peaceful protest’ extends is a much more tricky question.
It wasn’t in the middle of Covid. It was in February, 2022. In fact, the protest worked because most provinces eliminated their restrictions within a few weeks. The federal govt, however, could impose its will on truckers who crossing the border into the U.S. Truckers were being forced to get vaccines after two years of working through all the Covid madness. Everyone is free to have their opinion on the legitimacy of the protest, but Trudeau wouldn’t budge even an inch
You believe anything they tell you? The Diamond Princess was a floating Petri Dish, anyone with basic science could see the results AND know that this virus was NOT the new black death at the VERY start of the pandemic, at one point it ironically was top of the mortality charts.
Anyone who also studied the youtube videos of China and compared them to the data being put out by China and the WHO could notice staggering discrepancies.
Then anyone who cared to follow the excess mortality data across Europe and the age related mortality knew before Italy had even started locking down that this was a virus that killed the old and sick. Much like flu/pneumonia does.
Believe the authorities if you must, but some of us (Science degree, child a virologist working on vaccine development & whose lab was closed down as HMG ransacked it for testing chemicals & equipment) studied the data as it appeared. It very soon was clear that it was hysteria. The PCR tests were a fiddle from the start, as my virologist exclaimed in horror when the number of cycles was discoverable. Relatives who remained working in the NHS (large parts of it simply shut down and staff ‘disappeared’) were incandescent at some of the official responses, so egregious were their lies.
Curiously early on the lab leak led me to believe that the official hysteria was because Governments KNEW it got out of a lab. That they feared it was a bio-weapon. Assuming my previous posts at the start and height of the pandemic haven’t been removed you will see all this there.
Then anyone who listened to the cancelled scientists, Henegen and Jefferson being two, had a much better idea of reality. Fauci was up to his ears in this gain of function research AND he and his scientific mobsters tried to rubbish it all.
So as each day goes by the myths your were told by SAGE, WHO etc are being debunked and the ‘conspiracy theorists’ vindicated.
Here are just two quotes worth remembering from a very great scientist, Richard Feynman.
““Science is the organized skepticism in the reliability of expert opinion.”
“First you guess… if it disagrees with experience the guess is wrong. In that simple statement is the key to science. It doesn’t matter how beautiful your guess is or how smart you are or what your name is. If it disagrees with experience it’s wrong. That’s all there is to it.”
Similar principles can be applied to the Green Cults myths too.
Conflating so many differences makes it impossible draw a line.
The right to protest government coercion via law (or dictate) is not the same as protesting to require a new law come into effect. The coercive nature of law should favor the first case differently, since the protesters are by definition suffering under a form of government coercion. In such a case, a peaceful protest should demand more leniency, not less.
Obviously, inconveniencing people by assembling in the seat of power is different than violent protest. Violent protest is designed to force the public’s compliance, especially by breaking law’s with the intent to threaten public safety. In an amazing flight of irrationality, claiming unvaccinated people were a public health threat acknowledged that the vaccines were ineffective in the first place.
In any case, the struggle for justice has already been lost here; the injustice is merely continued under the guise of prosecution for “mischief.”
Well, we do have examples of other protesters going through the courts right now in Canada: environmentalists and indigenous Canadians. The environmentalists are also facing possible jail time. The environmentalists include Fairy Creek Old Growth (trees) demonstrators, and the organization Save Old Growth. Sad for me that both those in the old growth movement and the truck convoy have faced long drawn out pre trial legal ramifications such as house arrest and limits on movement and speech.
So for me this is not a left versus right issue but instead citizens versus their governments. And it should be noted that I was very involved in the Fairy Creek movement and involved a small amount in the truck convoy movement so I am sure our great prime minister would say I am biased and a bad Canadian..ha..ha
No, because ALL those are demanding OTHERS suffer the response. The Truckers were demanding that Government stopped forcing them to take part in the largest vaccine trial in history. IF you can’t see the difference between protesting at others being allowed to use fossil fuels, and themselves being forced to be a guinea pig in a medical experiment at risk of their livelihood I’m surprised.
Occupation and sedition are exactly what they were doing and I hope they get locked up as they deserve.
Trudeau went extremely easy on them – I’d have sent in the riot police on day 1. Peaceful protest is fine. Violent occupation of cities and intimidation of the citizenry for weeks is not.
What violence? Name one incidence of violence. The only incident I can think of at any protest was the antifa guy who tried to drive over a protestor in Winnipeg.
Read the Ottawa People’s Commission report, sport. Your far right wing sources are lying to you.
I said name an incident. You think I’m not familiar with that report? Name one incident – just one. Then we can all see what you and the Ottawa police consider violence. You throw shade on stuff you clearly have no idea about and expect us to do the heavy lifting. Name one incident? Let’s shed some light on that. And when you name that incident, remember a protestor in BC shot a flare gun at people sitting in a truck the night Trudeau invoked martial law.
Ah, the New Pravda? Excellent Champagne, excellent. I thought all the old-school, shoot them all Marxists had died out and become Blairites. You restore my belief in the madness of Marxism or Socialism as you call it. Though to openly ADMIT to the Champagne you quaff is unusual, they usually did it in secret.
Have you a Dacha too?
“Violent occupation of cities and intimidation of the citizenry” could apply to the foreign criminals, the belligerent homeless, the drug addled, and/or the mentally ill who occupy so many city centres and terrorise ordinary residents. It could also apply to the drug dealers who intimidate entire neighbourhoods where they conduct their business. It doesn’t apply to the truckers who basically threw a street party. And their only demand was that things return to normal. But a useless city government couldn’t control a simple parking problem and a vain PM seized a chance to play dictator.
There it is, the true face of the far left. All the endless virtue signaling is just a cover for the real objective, which is the consolidation and exercise of ever-increasing power. No quarter to these authoritarian, cowardly scumbags, they must be resisted at every turn and decisively stopped.
Finally, someone gets it!
Despite the media spin, the trucker protest was incredibly effective in achieving their goals. The whole world watched.
LOL –
“The unherd readers looked from Champagne Socialist to Far-right fascist, and from far-right fascist to Champagne Socialist and from Champagne Socialist to Far-right fascist again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
😉