Tag Archives: Chris Barber

CONVOY TRIAL DIARY: A Citizen’s Personal Confession By Trish Wood

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CONVOY TRIAL DIARY: A Citizen’s Personal Confession

After an Emotional Day in Court

Trish WoodSep 19, 2023

Alex Honnold — on a rock face climbing without ropes

Like Alex Honnold in Free Solo, hanging onto rock walls with only his fingertips, we’ve all traversed danger and darkness without a net over the past three years. But we’ve come out the other side – almost. I’m proud I stood tall and refused the vaccine even though the isolation was debilitating and there were days it cost me my sanity. I look back on it now and wonder how I did it.

One thing I do know is that it got easier once the truckers hit the road. The Freedom Convoy brought us together, pulled us out of the shadows and reminded us that Canada is actually a good place, full of pioneering spirit and generosity. I often say that feeling of connectedness reminded me of how we came together to grieve for those sixteen kids and their support staff from the Humboldt Broncos hockey team bus who died in pursuit of the ultimate Canadian cultural event — small-town, prairie hockey.

I had nightmares about the scene at that intersection, near Tisdale, Saskatchewan and when the call went out to place hockey sticks on our front porches, my husband did it at his business and we even put one outside our door in the hallway of our apartment building. I loved that our country understood the moment.

Hockey Sticks in Toronto

I was again thinking about this story yesterday in trucker court, sitting just behind Chris Barber and Tamara Lich on trial for various charges that are not connected to any violence. They had already been arrested and yet the Crown lead evidence from February 19th — a day the Sûreté du Québec and other police forces, some dressed in black-bloc were aggressively trying to clear the streets. What I am about to say should disqualify me from reporting on the trial — but I am declaring my bias here and let the chips fall where they may.

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The scenes were surreal. Convoy protestors, sometimes nose to nose with police chanted love over fear and peace, despite the militaristic threat they faced. I believe I heard a couple of hold the line comments as well. What I saw was a study in thoughtful civil disobedience — the kind we usually applaud from historical figures. The protestors were mostly men, some of them military age and during a another era, they might have been soldiers deployed overseas. Watching them keep their cool in the face of overwhelming police power felt miraculous.

Police and convoy protestors from an unknown date.

Here is my live tweet from court:

So my confession is that I felt deeply yesterday that I should have been there, standing with those people. I supported the convoy — that’s no secret but I wonder if that was enough.

Every time video clips are lead by the Crown, I have the same reaction — how calm and in control of themselves the protestors seemed to be. That was underscored by the SQ officer on the witness stand admitting that his Green Squad broke in the midst of it to go for lunch – a moment highlighted by Tamara’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon.

In the meantime it’s being reported on social media that some of this country’s biggest unions are planning to disrupt tomorrow’s protests against schoolboards, teachers and ideological medicine working to indoctrinate our kids. If you ever doubted that the lone and distant Nazi flag at the trucker protest was a product of the same thinking, here is more evidence they don’t tolerate debate or opinions different from their own.

Stay critical.

Day 3 of the Trial of Truckers’ Freedom Convoy Leaders, Political Prisoners Tamara Lich & Chris Barber

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CONVOY TRIAL DIARY: DAY THREE

Crown Evidence Also Documents the Success of the Convoy Protest

Trish WoodSep 8, 2023

Seen outside the Ottawa Court of Justice

The prosecution of Chris Barber and Tamara Lich for their roles in the trucker convoy protests at times feels unsettling. Is it a microcosm of how our institutions and systems haven’t come to terms with what many people, outside the laptop bubble, are experiencing. Like forcing vaccination with an experimental product on healthy people or enabling a child’s psychic confusion with pharmaceuticals and surgery, the trial is a process but to what purpose? Where does this lead?

As I watched a series of Chris Barber’s TikTok videos unspool on courtroom screens yesterday, I was pulled back to those first days of the convoy when my faith in my fellow Canadians was restored. I had been concerned that the running of the country had been handed to public health bureaucrats, that our elected officials had stepped away and were no longer in charge. That media was not holding to account the people they should. Risk/benefit calculations had not been run and it was becoming clear the cure was worse than the disease. No matter how esteemed the expert witnesses, courts were not finding in favour of people challenging the government’s civil liberties overreach as we faced lockdown after lockdown and a mandated shot.

In the TikToks, we see Barber reacting to what the convoy had achieved and it made me smile for a minute recollecting those weeks of hope. Sitting almost directly in front of me, I watched him for a reaction but saw only a focussed man jotting notes in rapt attention.

The short videos and other social media seem to be making up a large part of the Crown’s case which involves proving mischief and the counselling of same — something Tim Radcliffe will likely argue the videos show. But that’s not what I saw. No one in that courtroom could walk away without noticing how well Barber comes off. He veers between imploring the protestors to be peaceful, to frustration at the government’s intransigence, to astonishment over the convoy’s successful fundraising campaign — a measure of how Canadians perceived the protest. And perhaps its downfall. Don’t forget it was the former mayor of Ottawa who convinced Go Fund Me to shut down the convoy account based on false allegations the truckers were violent. From Blacklock’s:

The proceedings have been plagued by organizational issues and technical glitches but so far it’s been cordial between all parties. Justice Heather Perkins-McVey even addressed the gallery Thursday morning to inquire if we could see and hear the video monitors well enough to follow along. I raised my hand and asked if they could be raised higher and she acknowledge that this a problem but not fixable. As I’ve said, she seems affable and fair. All good things in a criminal court justice.

Back to the videos — from the Ottawa Citizen:

Convoy protest organizer Chris Barber called for people to “flood the city” in a social media video that was shown Thursday in court as part of his criminal trial in Ottawa.

The Crown hopes his rallying call for people to come to Ottawa last year as police ordered protesters to leave may prove just as damaging to his fellow organizer, Tamara Lich as they could potentially be to Barber.

Barber, who operated a trucking business in Swift Current, Sask., and Lich, from Medicine Hat, Alta., are co-accused in the trial. They face charges of mischief, counselling others to commit mischief, intimidation, and obstructing police, all in relation to their roles organizing the protest against COVID-19 health restrictions last year that blockaded downtown Ottawa streets for weeks.

Barber faces an additional charge of counselling others to disobey a court order that banned the big rigs and other vehicles parked in the streets in protest, from honking their horns in the downtown core.

In the end, no matter what the outcome, this trial will be seen as a referendum on a citizen’s right to peacefully protest in the face of what they perceive as a grave and even life-threatening injustice.

There will be a motion to dismiss from the convoy lawyers at some point.

Just about to record this week’s podcast and then back to court.

Stay critical.

Day 4 of the Trial of Political Prisoners Tamara Lich & Chris Barber

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Crown exhibit from police body cam.

Hybrid Edition: Sorry for the delay. Yesterday was busy, just getting back from Ottawa. I am including this week’s podcast which is also about the convoy and includes voice messages from people whose lives were harmed by Trudeau’s vaccine mandates (that he says didn’t force anyone).

I’ve been tough on Crown Attorney Tim Radcliffe this week but I don’t think unfairly. It is a mystery to me why he is conducting his case against trucker convoy defendants Chris Barber and Tamara Lich in a manner that is clearly frustrating the judge, annoying the defence and making long days in the courtroom almost unbearably boring.

Friday was a shit show that caused Justice Heather Perkins-McVey to suggest the trial has the potential for going off the rails. She has been a paragon of patience so far but Friday was so bizarre she requested a recess to settle herself. And her mantra was something like I am not happy.

Justice Heather Perkins-McVey

Radcliffe seems either unprepared or somehow unaware of the rules of evidence and disclosure — the gist of which is that the prosecutor must provide the elements of its case to the defence plus all materials in reasonable time to allow counsel to prepare a response. Criminal law 101. From the Criminal Law Notebook.

The Crown must disclose all materials and information that is in its possession or control that is not clearly irrelevant, regardless of if the evidence is to be called at trial or is inculpatory or exculpatory.[1]

The right to disclosures premised upon (1) the right to know the case to meet and (2) the right to make full answer in defence of an offence charged.[2]

Materials in possession of the Crown are not the “property” of the Crown but rather is the “property of the public to be used to ensure that justice is done.”[3]

Purpose

The right to disclosure is founded in the principle of fair play between parties[4] as well as the right to make full answer and defence. [5]

The right to make full answer and defence also suggests in a timely fashion which defence lawyer, Diane Magas asserts did not happen here. Canadian Press picked up by CTV reported in detail what transpired.

Hope that the trial of two “Freedom Convoy” organizers would last only four weeks may be dashed after the defence raised complaints about receiving heaps of new evidence mid trial. 

There was a sense of tension in the courtroom Friday as Crown and defence lawyers sparred over the timing of the delivery of binders of text message evidence to the defence.

Justice Heather Perkins-McVey called a short recess to step away from the bench to “settle” herself after telling the lawyers she was “very unhappy” about the late-stage disclosure.

“This should have been done well before the trial,” she chided before leaving the courtroom.

Perkins-McVey is now working with court staff to find more dates as the prospect the trial will run long has grown. Initially 16 days were set aside for the trial, with three extra days added to the court’s calendar as a precaution.

But as the first week of hearings drew to a close Friday, it was clear the timelines were on the brink of being blown.

In fairness to Radcliffe, he might argue that there is precedent for what he is doing. Perhaps I just didn’t understand it or had stepped out to the washroom but there seemed to be general bafflement toward his approach to evidence. What does this mean for the case? It’s not a good look for the Crown but honourable judges, as Justice Perkins-McVey seems to be, can overlook these issues in the end and focus solely on the evidence as she perceives it — so this is not necessarily a freebie for Lich and Barber.

Trish Wood is Critical is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In American courts, not handing over exculpatory evidence, something called a Brady violation, will get a convicted person out of jail if discovered after trial. It happened in a wrongful conviction case I investigated involving boxer Dewey Bozella, imprisoned for murdering an elderly lady in upstate New York. No one is suggesting Radcliffe is hiding evidence. But rather delivering it in perhaps obstructionist ways.

All week, there have been housekeeping issues and questions of actual provenance around what seems like hundreds of exhibits, from TikTok videos to digital messaging. As someone who works in documentary films, I can tell you that organizing this kind of material, on a scale this size is a humongous job and the Crown should have set aside a special budget and staff to ensure it was organized and accessible to all relevant parties in meaningful ways. I suspect the Crown’s case relies on it – so this could require a huge fix. Lots of people will be working on it this weekend on both side of the aisle.

This week’s show (listen here) is a convoy special with my documentary producing partner Jacqueline Bynon who was in Ottawa with me and our crew and Tom Marazzo, a convoy participant who has a new book out about his experience. On the show you will hear the voice recordings from Canada and the UK of people whose lives were turned upside by the vaccine mandates that didn’t, according tour our prime minister, mandate the vaccine at all. We didn’t suffer the losses and pain we think we did — because Justin Trudeau is now saying it didn’t happen.

Don’t you feel better now?

Stay critical.

Back to to Ottawa soon.

Appeal from Derek Sloan Regarding the Emergency Inquiry to Give A Voice to Victims of Trudeau Brutality

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Appeal from Derek Sloan Regarding the Emergency Inquiry


First, I would like to thank you again for all of your donations, your generosity to these freedom fighters is going a long way to help them continue to fight.

As the Emergency Inquiry continues – we have an exciting week ahead – with Tom Marazzo, Chris Barber, Danny Bulford, Brigitte Belton and Tamara Lich scheduled to testify. I’m certain their testimony will be riveting.
etransfer :  fundingthefight@proton.me 
Please use password – Freedom
Today we want to broaden the net to raise some money for lost wages and living expenses for other Convoy heroes who are in Ottawa testifying and witnessing the proceedings.

Chris Barber, AKA Big Red, is one of the original founding members of the Freedom Convoy from Saskatchewan. He has been in Ottawa occurring expenses for the past few weeks.

Maggie Dingman is a mother who was arrested, driven 30 min away from downtown and dropped off in the snow without a working cell phone. She’s been suffering from PTSD as a result of the police pointing a rifle at her head.

Brigitte Belton is a hardworking trucker and one of the main organizers of the Convoy. Brigitte and Chris brought Tamara Lich into the original group and she began organizing the Freedom Convoy.

Chris Deering is an Afghanistan veteran and a Convoy leader. He was beaten by the police, and lost one of his medals that he was proudly wearing during his arrest. He lost a significant amount of wages during the period of his arrest, and is incurring further expenses right now in Ottawa during the Emergency Act inquiry.

Danny Bulford is a former RCMP sniper who worked on Justin Trudeau’s security detail. His stand for truth cost him his job, but gained him a lot of respect. He was a crucial part of Convoy operations.

And finally there’s Tamara Lich. She’s been arrested, denied bail, and re-arrested and denied bail again. The government has brought the hammer down on her – because she’s been the figurehead of the Convoy movement. They hope they can break her. I’m betting they won’t. 
 
etransfer:  fundingthefight@proton.me 
Please use password – Freedom
Please help support Tamara Lich, Chris Barber, Chris Deering, Maggie Dingman, Brigitte Belton, and Danny Bulford as they continue to fight for truth in Ottawa.