Jailed for embarrassing the Canadian government

At long last, the Ontario government’s drawn-out legal proceedings against the organizers of the Freedom Convoy is winding to a conclusion. In a move seen as surprisingly vindictive, the Crown is seeking minimum sentencing of seven and eight years of jail time respectively for leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber.

As Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre posted on X, “Let’s get this straight: while rampant violent offenders are released hours after their most recent charges and antisemitic rioters vandalize businesses, terrorize daycares and block traffic without consequences, the Crown wants seven years prison time for the charge of mischief for Lich and Barber. How is this justice?”

Other MPs called the sentencing demands “excessive and vindictive,” and said “this is political vengeance, not actual justice.”

What is going on here?

Tamara Lich has no prior convictions; she has committed no violence and damaged no property. A tiny little lady at five foot nothing, she’s been subjected to leg shackles, solitary confinement, and has already been held in jail for 49 days.

Chris Barber is a family man and father of two who owns a small trucking company. In addition to an eight-year jail sentence, the Crown seeks to confiscate his truck, his chief means of livelihood, which he has affectionately nicknamed Big Red. No one has accused Barber of threatening anyone, inciting violence or damaging property.

Indeed, all sides agree that he and Tamara Lich consistently called for protestors to stay peaceful during the protest in early 2022, be respectful of police and cooperate if arrested. They also agree that Barber worked with police on arriving in Ottawa to park the trucks in designated areas, to try to keep emergency lanes free and to coordinate the relocation of trucks and vehicles with police.

And even the Crown concedes that Tamara Lich and Chris Barber led the convoy to Ottawa legally and with good intentions. So at what point did this perfectly legal protest turn into a crime worthy of seven to eight years of jail?

Apparently, when the protest began to inconvenience Ottawa residents with noise and traffic obstructions in the downtown area, Lich and Barber committed mischief by saying “Hold the line,” and encouraging protestors to remain.

When a court order was issued banning honking, Chris Barber told the protestors to heed the injunction, unless their trucks were swarmed and broken into by riot police. He said drivers should honk in this situation to alert others. This suggestion earned him a separate conviction – and, the Crown hopes, an extra year of jail time.

The pettiness of it has to be seen to be believed. Clearly Doug Ford’s government is out to make an example of Lich and Barber. Why? To punish them for embarrassing the government in the eyes of the world, and to stifle public debate about Canada’s pandemic management.

On the surface, this situation is all about civil liberties, and balancing the right to protest with someone else’s right to enjoy their property. But underneath, it’s about the government twisting every which way to avoid accountability.

The Freedom Convoy came to Ottawa to draw the government’s attention to a pressing issue, something that had put a large number of Canadians into a state of severe distress: vaccine mandates and lockdowns.

These Canadians were either ignored by politicians and the media, or demonized as racist misogynists, people who should be excluded from society and even from their own families. They were kicked out of school and university, fired from their jobs, and subjected to intimidation by journalists and politicians, who suggested they should pay extra taxes or even be jailed.

Let’s not forget that what kicked off the convoy movement was the decision of some government genius to make 16,000 truckers’ jobs conditional on yet another draconian Covid restriction – this, with a supply chain in shambles, and years of changing the rules every couple of weeks.

Few of us want to dwell on the dark days of Covid, now happily over, or reflect on the human cost of the decisions made in that time of crisis. But burying the past is not a luxury in which governments are entitled to indulge.

The truckers didn’t sit there blocking traffic and honking horns for the sheer joy of it. They did so because every other mode of public expression was barred to them and those they represented. The stunning outpouring of popular support that accompanied the truckers as they made their way across the country gave them a clear mandate to make themselves heard.

And while certainly some Ottawa residents were inconvenienced (though tthe prosecution’s talk of “lasting psychological scars” is surely a little overwrought), the issues brought forward by the truckers were of significant national interest and of a pressing nature, considerations that did not appear to weigh heavily in Lich and Barber’s conviction.

They persisted because the government refused to engage. Instead, it chose to arrest their leaders and invoke the Emergencies Act (illegitimately, as a federal court ruled last year) and cleared the streets by force.

And now the government wants Chris Barber’s truck, and a criminal record, so he can no longer earn his living by hauling freight into the States. They want grandmother Tamara Lich, a model of good citizenry and peaceful protest, behind bars for seven years.

Most importantly, the government wants the seal of silence stamped on what happened during the pandemic. Does the Canadian justice system really want to be perceived as helping them with that?