The trial for the leaders of the so-called Freedom Convoy protest that gridlocked Canada’s capital for weeks in 2022 began on Tuesday.
Tamara Lich and Chris Barber each face counts of mischief and obstructing police.
The two were part of a group that led a convoy of lorries to Ottawa to protest against Covid-19 measures and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government.
Experts say the outcome of the trial could reverberate beyond the courts.
I don’t support the convoy but didn’t they do what most large rallies do anyway? Make noise, block roads and make the news for weeks.
What comes of this court ruling could be dangerous for future protests for things that are truly important. Considering the charges for what seems to be minor crimes and not what was being reported at the time of inciting violence and smuggling I just don’t know what am I missing.
I live in downtown Ottawa and did during the convoy too. There’s often protests going on down here considering it’s the capital, but this one was not the same. I and everyone else down here faced constant harassment whenever we left our houses and had to listen to horns blaring 24/7. People were assaulted for just wearing a mask on the street, business windows broken for having pride flags, and roads blocked for 3 weeks straight.
People here say it was an occupation rather than a protest and it really did feel like it.
Most rallies don’t involve intentionally keeping locals awake at all hours with train horns. They also smashed windows of businesses that had pride flags, shat and pissed everywhere, threatened staff at one of our local homeless shelters demanding food, and one of my partner’s nursing colleagues recieved rape threats for walking to work in her scrubs and a mask.
I hope they throw the book at them. This shit was so awful for the people in downtown Ottawa.
Ottawans are used to protests. It’s a capital city, there’s serveral protests going in any given day.
What they weren’t used to was the neverending train horns, the constant street blocking, the assaults, the destruction of property, and the constant threats. They lasted way longer than I would have.
Fuck the convoy and fuck the people like Poilievre who supported them.
So many people posted on Reddit that they weren’t getting any sleep. It’s a form of terrorism, frankly. Not all terrorism is deadly.
I don’t want to detract from the severity of other forms of terrorism, but sleep deprivation can absolutely cost human lives as well, especially when it’s on the scale of a whole city section.
Definitely don’t ever underestimate how quickly lack of sleep can mess you up mentally and physically.
Inflicting sleep deprivation on a person is widely recognized as a form of torture by human rights organizations as well as the UN.
What’s the maximum jail time they could face? Please say 22 years…
This is the best summary I could come up with:
The main charge that Ms Lich and Mr Barber will have to defend is that of mischief, defined under Canadian law as the wilful destruction, damaging, obstruction, or interference of property.
Separate protests also blocked a key US-Canada border crossing near Detroit, angering the White House and disrupting the flow of goods.
They came to an end after Mr Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act - the first time the Canadian law has been used - which allowed police to clear the streets and the government to impose bans on public assembly and freeze the bank accounts of protesters.
In Tuesday’s opening remarks, Crown prosecutor Tim Radcliffe accused the two of directing people to Ottawa and asking them to stay and “hold the line”.
But during a July bail hearing, an Ontario court judge said that due to this “very unusual case, there is significant uncertainty about the degree to which she will be held culpable for the assortment of alleged bad acts committed over many weeks by various persons in a crowd of thousands”.
Both Ms Lich and Mr Barber, along with other named organisers, are facing a separate C$300m ($222m; £175m) civil lawsuit brought against them by Ottawa residents over the disruptions in the city.
The original article contains 699 words, the summary contains 206 words. Saved 71%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
