Where Does Trial for Freedom Convoy Organizers Stand?

The trial for Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, which was supposed to last 16 days but has stretched to over a year, is finally coming to a close.
Barber and Lich are two of the main organizers of the Freedom Convoy protest in early 2022, which was started in response to pandemic-related restrictions and vaccine mandates and resulted large numbers of trucks gathered in downtown Ottawa to protest the measures.
On Feb. 14, 2022, the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time ever to bring the protest to an end, and Lich and Barber were arrested on Feb. 17.
The pair were charged with mischief, intimidation, and counselling others to break the law, while Barber is also accused of counselling others to disobey a court order.
Crown lawyers say the evidence against the two is “overwhelming.”
Defence lawyers, on the other hand, say there is little evidence that Lich and Barber had criminal intent throughout the protest, or that they worked closely together to organize and direct the protesters in Ottawa.
Crown lawyers also made the case that Lich and Barber “crossed the line” when encouraging people to protest in Ottawa, and in doing so committed multiple crimes. They’ve attempted to make the case that the two had control and influence over the protesters, and that they worked together so closely that evidence applying to one should apply to the other, which is known as a Carter application.
The court also viewed numerous social media videos of the protest, which both the Crown and defence lawyers highlighted to make their cases.
Crown attorney Siobhain Wetscher said the noise, traffic congestion, and harassment associated with the protest were outside the spectrum of “what would be considered lawful demonstration.” She said that, of all the previous court cases around the Freedom Convoy, not a single one found that the demonstration was lawful, although some individuals had been acquitted of their charges.
Prosecutor Tim Radcliffe took the court through instances that he said showed Lich and Barber working closely together to gridlock Ottawa. He pointed to text messages sent by Barber saying the protest was meant to “cause grief” and that they had “trainwrecked traffic” in the city.
Crown lawyers had earlier emphasized footage in which Lich and Barber encouraged protesters to “hold the line”—which they interpreted as a call for demonstrators to stay in Ottawa and continue protesting. They also highlighted a video in which, following a court injunction against blowing horns, Barber encouraged protesters to honk if they saw police arriving.
Barber’s defence lawyer Diane Magas, on the other hand, said in her closing argument that the two had not intended to block traffic in the city and in fact worked together with police to ensure the roads remained open. Magas showed the court text messages from Feb. 7, 2022, in which Barber said the vehicles had ended up “all over the city” when they were supposed to have been directed by police to a staging area. Magas said the messages showed that Barber was “overwhelmed” by the situation and trying to work with the police.
Magas said Barber’s text messages throughout the protest showed that his mens rea, or mental state, was that he wanted to work with the police to prevent illegal actions from happening.
Granger also attempted to poke holes in the Crown’s Carter application by pointing out that the conspiracy allegation is often used to prosecute drug trafficking or murder cases where the objective is illegal. He said that in this case, the act of protesting itself was not illegal.
Throughout the closing arguments, Justice Perkins-McVey listened intently but occasionally interjected to ask questions or press the lawyers on their reasoning. She pushed back against the Crown’s statement that it had been established “beyond a reasonable doubt” that Barber and Lich were the organizers and leaders of the Convoy, noting that there were many different groups protesting in Ottawa and the pair did not have control over all of them.
The judge said the evidence had shown that “a number of things converged at once that nobody really had the intelligence on,” and that the police “didn’t plan accordingly.”
“It began in a way that was hard to get out of,” Perkins-McVey said.