Ontario judge orders RCMP and TD Bank to release records tied to freezing Freedom Convoy protester Evan Blackman’s bank accounts.
Government’s use of the 2022 Emergencies Act faces scrutiny over civil liberties violations, including bank seizures and coerced tow truck conscription.
In 2023, Blackman was acquitted of mischief and obstruction charges, but Ottawa appealed, leading to an upcoming retrial in August 2025.
2024 court ruling found Trudeau’s invocation of the emergencies law “not justified,” highlighting overreach in targeting peaceful protesters.
Legal backers seek to link bank seizures to constitutional violations, framing the case as a landmark challenge to state powers.
Evan Blackman, one of hundreds whose accounts were frozen under the law, faces a retrial in August 2025 after being acquitted in 2023 of charges related to the Ottawa demonstrations. His lawyers argue that the seizure of his funds — a decision first reviewed as lawful but later condemned by federal judges — violates Charter rights to privacy and freedom of expression. The court’s demand for transparency could unravel the government’s case while exposing systemic flaws in its pandemic-era policies.
The legal fight over “extreme overreach”
The ruling demands disclosure of documents detailing how and why Blackman’s accounts were frozen under Section 53 of the Emergencies Act, which Trudeau invoked on February 14, 2022. The law, originally designed for responses to disasters like floods or terrorist threats, granted unprecedented power to block financial transactions, seize property and militarize law enforcement.
Constitutional lawyer Chris Fleury, representing Blackman’s Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF), called the seizure “an extreme overreach,” stressing that the records could prove the government “illegally punished peaceful dissent.” Blackman, an Ottawa-area protester detained after participating in nonviolent rallies, saw his three accounts frozen for over a week, potentially stifling his ability to prepare a defense during the original charges.
The JCCF emphasizes that this is the first criminal case in Canada attempting to halt proceedings under Section 8 of the Charter, which bars unreasonable searches or seizures, and Section 2(b), protecting free expression. Their stance draws strength from a 2024 Federal Court ruling by Justice Richard Mosley, who declared Trudeau’s emergency declaration “not justified,” arguing it failed to balance public interest with human rights.
The 2022 protests and their aftermath
The Freedom Convoy began on January 15, 2022, as a movement protesting vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions. By early February, it swelled into hundreds of tractor-trailers blocking Ottawa’s streets, leading Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act—a move nearly all provinces condemned.
Documents now sought by the JCCF could clarify how authorities targeted nonviolent advocates. While the government framed protests as violent, much of the event unfolded as group camping, community meals and music, according to RCMP logs obtained by the National Post. Instead, most documented violence stemmed from state actions: videos showed mounted police trampling an elderly woman and attacking journalists.
Critics argue the law’s use set a dangerous precedent. Despite a special commission later endorsing Trudeau’s emergency declaration, federal courts — including Mosley’s decision — have since eroded its legitimacy.
What lies ahead: A trial with national implications?
Blackman’s retrial in August could become a landmark test of Canada’s emergency laws. His legal team plans to argue that the federal government’s seizure of funds was retaliation for political speech, violating the Charter. If successful, similar cases by over 100 protest-era plaintiffs might proceed, reshaping how authorities handle dissent.
Meanwhile, the RCMP and TD Bank have yet to publicly comment, though the ruling binds them to comply. The outcome may also influence current debates over pandemic-era policies, as critics question the viability of invoking “extreme measures” for non-violent public assemblies.
As Fleury noted, the case “exposes a dangerous precedent where the state weaponizes financial control to silence dissidents.” For civil liberties advocates, the ruling offers a rare chance to challenge a legacy of distrust in Trudeau’s leadership — and redefine the limits of crises authority.
A new day for accountability, or an open door for state power?
The Ontario court’s demand for transparency in Blackman’s case underscores a growing reckoning with the 2022 pandemic policies. While the protests seemed forgotten to some, the legal fallout continues to reveal a government unprepared to balance safety with constitutionality — and a judiciary increasingly willing to hold it to account.
As the Aug. 14 retrial nears, Canadians wait to learn more than Blackman’s fate: whether their next crisis will be met with calm stewardship… or another round of rushed, rights-eroding reforms.
Seven years ago I entitled my annual essay for our country’s birthday “State of the Dominion – 2018.” This was during the premiership of Captain Airhead, towards the end of his first term, and I noted that we were in the midst of a third “revolution within the form.” The first had taken place in the early twentieth century in the premiership of William Lyon Mackenzie King and the second from the mid-1960s to 1982 in the premierships of Lester Pearson and Pierre Trudeau. Captain Airhead is finally out of office, although the Liberal Party – the party that each of these men had led – remains in power, under the new leadership of Blofeld. So it is time to revisit the matter of the state of the Dominion.
The first thing to be observed is that as we emerge from the Airhead premiership Canada is in a far less worse condition than we could have anticipated going into that premiership after the 2015 Dominion Election. This does not mean that we are emerging unscathed, far from it.
On the social/moral front alone, the progressive agenda has been horribly advanced. In 2023 a bill banning “conversion therapy” passed Parliament with unanimous support. While the expression “conversion therapy” tends to conjure up the image of something similar to the Ludovico Technique from A Clockwork Orange, the bill banning it was worded so broadly that it essentially forbids the offering of counseling to anyone seeking help in conforming their “sexual orientation” and/or “gender identity” to the reality of their biological sex. Meanwhile, the progressive forces that demanded this ban have insisted that the opposite sort of conversion therapy be provided at the taxpayers’ expense to minors without their parents’ consent. The opposite sort of conversion therapy is hormone therapy and surgery intended to conform biological sex, at least in appearance, to “gender identity.”
Nor is this the worst example of the advancement of the progressive social/moral agenda in the Airhead years. That dishonour goes to the aggressive promotion of the culture of death by Captain Airhead. There was little he could do in the way of making abortion more available in Canada since the status quo going into his premiership was the absence of any legal restrictions due to the failure of Parliament to pass any after the Morgentaler ruling in 1988 struck down the previous laws on the matter. He could and did waste tax dollars on promoting abortion outside of Canada. It was the euthanasia side of the culture of death, however, that will be remembered as the darkest part of his legacy. Captain Airhead became prime minister later in the year that the Supreme Court struck down the Criminal Code’s prohibition against euthanasia and in the first year of his premiership a bill that outright legalized it passed Parliament. In the near-decade since, further legislation, policy decisions and court rulings have expanded the assisted suicide program dubbed MAID (Medical Assistance in Dying) and like abortion, marketed by those in favour of it as a “health care” choice, extending it far beyond the terminally ill. In 2021 they got Parliament to pass a bill making it much easier to obtain approval for MAID and extending it to those whom sane people would say are most in need of being protected from it, that is, the mentally ill, although this provision was delayed from coming into effect until the year after next. In the meantime government agencies that process requests for financial aid from, most notably, military veterans, have recommended MAID as an alternative.
So no, Canada did not emerge from the Airhead era unscathed, and wounds on other fronts than the social/moral could be provided to further illustrate this. My point, however, is that Captain Airhead did not do all the damage it looked like he was about to do at the beginning of his premiership. This was not for lack of intent or trying on his part. It is partly due to the fact that he and his entire circle of associates were grossly incompetent, an affliction not shared by previous revolutionaries such as his own father or William Lyon Mackenzie King. It is partly due to the fact that the Canada which the Fathers of Confederation bequeathed to us with her ancient Imperial/Commonwealth heritage of parliamentary monarchy and Common Law rights and freedoms, while weakened by these Liberal “revolutions within the form” was still resilient enough to prevent Captain Airhead from doing his worst. It is partly due to the fact that most Canadians have simply not succumbed to the brain rot that in its most recent form has been dubbed “wokeness” to the extent that Captain Airhead and the progressive commentariat all assumed they had.
The first of these three factors needs nothing in the way of further commentary.
The second factor may be disputed by neoconservatives (people who call themselves conservatives even though they wish to replace our constitution, traditions, and heritage with those of the United States or something more closely resembling them) who over the last several years have chosen to express their frustration with the Airhead Liberals by taking it out on the country with the claim that “Canada is broken” but these are wrong. The Fathers of Confederation built a far more resilient country than could be ultimately broken by the likes of Captain Airhead. I attribute the neoconservative error in about equal parts to their misguided preference for the American system and to the sort of infantile thinking that sees every court ruling, election, or other such public occurrence that does not go one’s way as showing the entire system to be damaged beyond repair, which sort of thinking is by no means limited to neoconservatives.
Of all Captain Airhead’s bad acts, the worst was when he invoked the Emergencies Act in 2022 to crush the Freedom Convoy Protest. Unlike the types of protests he routinely supported, the Freedom Convey did not involve the destruction or defacement of property, public or private, violence, or riotous behaviour in general but was a true peaceful demonstration. The trucker-protestors converged on Ottawa, parked in the neighbourhood around the government buildings, and basically threw a long, loud, party in the streets. The protest was entirely justified. It was in response to the Liberal government’s having introduced new restrictions by removing the exemption to vaccine mandates for cross-border truckers at the time when restrictions were generally being rolled back, showing the government’s determination to milk the absurd bat flu paranoia for as long as they could at the expense of the rights, freedoms, and livelihoods of Canadians. There was no call for bringing out the biggest weapon the government had at its disposal against the protestors, the brutality with which the government broke up the protest was the sort of thing one would expect from the Chinese or North Korean regimes, and the ongoing legal persecution of the protest organizers is disgusting, to say the least. Nevertheless, it could have been a lot worse, and all the evidence indicates that Airhead and his cronies intended to go much further. They were forced to rescind the Emergencies Act, however, because the Senate was about to vote against confirming their having invoked it, which would have made their position much more difficult going into the mandatory inquiry that followed. As for the inquiry itself, while Justice Rouleau’s finding that the government had met the threshold required for invoking the Act was absurd, Captain Airhead failed in his efforts to turn the inquiry into a trial of the protesters’ actions rather than his own, and when the Federal Court ruled on the same question a year later, they found against the government.
That is what the system working looks like. It could have and should have worked better. Ultimately, however, it worked.
That Canadians do not share Captain Airhead’s “woke” views to the extent he always assumed is a large part of the reason why he is no longer prime minister and why the Liberal Party under Blofeld has taken several steps back from aggressive promotion of the “woke” agenda.. Whether this will be permanent or is only temporary while the forces of progressive insanity regroup remains to be seen, but for now at least, the Liberal government is focusing on matters that appeal to a wider base among Canadians than the far left fringe. That something like this would happen sooner or later was inevitable because an ideological agenda based on maximizing every type of diversity except diversity of thought is unsustainable. Towards the end of the Airhead premiership, the left’s efforts to maximize diversity in the realm of sex and gender were undermined by its simultaneous efforts to maximize diversity in the realm of culture and race. That this would happen was entirely predictable because the only way to maximize diversity of culture and race in a Western society is by increasing the number of people whose culture has not been so transformed by Modern liberalism as to make it supportive of maximizing sex/gender diversity. Eventually the foreseeable clash occurred and a sizeable portion of Canadians realized that Captain Airhead was pushing diversity too far in both of these areas.
For the immediately foreseeable future, it is likely that immigration levels will remain higher than they ought to be but will cease to resemble overt efforts to make Jean Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints into a reality. Promotion of the alphabet soup agenda will probably continue but it will be much lower key than under Captain Airhead. That this is the case is evident in the fact that the abuse of the sign of God’s covenant with Noah was a lot less conspicuous last month than in the “month formerly known as June” in previous years. The same will be more or less true in other areas where Captain Airhead pushed his agenda far beyond what the general public was willing to support him in.
In conclusion, while Canada should be in a much better condition than she actually is, she is far better off after a decade of Captain Airhead than could possibly have been anticipated.
A quick scan of the index will save you time and bring you up to date. Each index item will appear in order in the email with pertinent details. Please pay special attention to those with dates to remember and any action items (petitions, etc.) that can be handled within a very few minutes.
1. Rallies and local events
o P4F weekly rally details – Sunday Main & Warren
o P4F Zoom Planning Meeting – Taking Back BC – January January 24 – 6 p.m.
o NCI Live Event. Dr. Robert Malone, who testified at the NCI in Toronto with NCI’s Lead Counsel Shawn Buckley
o Freedom Convoy Tribute 2024 January 27, 2024
2. Action of the Week
o CPSBC Discipline Hearing for Dr. Charles Hoffe
3. Worth a Look at other newsletters of interest – links
o Freedom Rising newsletter: issue 62 link.
o Druthers January Issue
LOCAL EVENTS
FREEDOM RALLIES – Penticton4Freedom – every Sunday from 1 to 3 p.m.
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COMING UP THIS SUNDAY
· Wins of the week. Taking back BC. Dr. Hoffe’s message to us all. Upcoming Town Halls, and more…
Miss a week and you miss a lot! Surprise speakers are a common occurrence.Fighting for freedom is more fun with friends. Bring a few. Bring your signs or borrow one of ours. Suggest a topic or a speaker, and we’ll gladly find someone to share their knowledge with us.——————————————- o0o———————————————— P4F Zoom Meeting – this coming Wednesday, January 24 at 6 p.m. Agenda: 1. Freedom Convoy Details for January 27 2. Local Town Hall plans 3. Open discussion We’ll keep this and future planning meetings to not more than 90 minutes, including the sharing this time of the BC Rising video with David Parker, on the strategies and successes of the Take Back Alberta movement. Tips on how we can Take Back BC, too. Mark your calendar and save the link or click here to join on Wednesday, January 24 at 6 p.m. https://us02web.zoom.us/j/88439739940?pwd=OHpKay9CZDJUTm53cGYxNXVlU1dwQT09——————————————- o0o————————————————Date: Tuesday, January 23, 2024
TOPIC: Expansion on Dr. Malone’s testimony on 5th generation warfare and other news
Discussion Highlights: How the US Cyber Security and Infrastructure Security Agency has published a list of the threatening actions which ironically they are actively doing themselves. Also, the topic of the Surgeon General of Florida Joseph Latipo calling for the stopping of the Covid vaccines which mirrors the NCI Commissioners Report findings. Gain valuable insights on these topics and much more.
There is an upcoming CPSBC Discipline Hearing for Dr. Charles Hoffe on March 4-15. You can attend via Zoom or in person. Click the button below for information, required forms, and details. Thank you for your support. More Information——————————————- o0o————————————————
WORTH A LOOKAction-Packed Freedom Rising Newsletter Issue 62Breaking the Oath: UnauthorizedExposing Medical MurderHERE ——————————- o0o————————————- January Issue Online and pick up print copies at P4F rallies. Covering news and information that mainstream media won’t. For over a year, Penticton4Freedom supporters have donated enough money to Druthers to cover the cost of the 1,200 copies we distribute every month, plus some left over to support other distributors. Thank you for being an everyday hero by donating, reading, sharing, and distributing Druthers copies in your area.Read DRUTHERS
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Want to join the fun in one of these initiatives or suggest another more important to you?
Just reply to this email or call 780-908-0309 to offer your help and suggestions.
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Today Justice Paul Rouleau released his verdict on Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act to violently crush the Freedom Convoy one year ago.
Rouleau concluded that Trudeau’s use of the Act was justified.
In a delirious statement, he claims that it was reasonable to believe that this peaceful and joyful protest posed “a threat to the security of Canada”!
I have to say, I am profoundly disappointed, but not surprised.
Justice Rouleau was hand-picked by Trudeau to oversee the inquiry. We can’t forget that Rouleau has a history as a Liberal activist and worked with former Prime Minister John Turner.
This Commission was not independent, as it should have been. It was Liberals investigating Liberals.
Is anyone really surprised that Liberals protect their own?
At the end of the day, the findings of Rouleau don’t really matter.
We all know that Trudeau would not have resigned even if the Commission had found he overstepped his powers.
We all know that Jagmeet Singh would not have held Trudeau accountable by withdrawing his support and forcing an election.
No matter the findings of this illegitimate inquiry, Trudeau’s actions of one year ago exposed him as the tyrant he is.
He crushed peaceful protesters with police horses.
He threw people in jail on false charges.
He froze people’s bank accounts without due process.
The Freedom Convoy forced Trudeau to show his true colours.
It exposed the opposition, the NDP, Conservatives, and Bloc as incompetent and incapable of holding the government to account.
Frederick, we must replace these corrupt politicians with People’s Party MPs willing to govern in the best interest of all Canadians!
Mon Dec 12, 2022 – 6:19 pm EST Listen to this article 0:00 / 4:01 BeyondWords
(LifeSiteNews) — A new report shows that a large Canadian credit union reported to the police one of its customers who “liked” the Freedom Convoy Facebook page and proceeded to monitor his financial transactions.
According to Blacklock’s Reporter, recently released records show that on February 15 of this year, Assiniboine Credit Union in Winnipeg, Manitoba, reported one of its users to the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) because he had “liked” the Freedom Convoy Facebook page, telling the federal police he is “potentially involved” in the protest.
The report to the RCMP came the day after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act (EA) to shut down the protest, wherein the government gave banks and financial institutions the power to freeze suspected Freedom Convoy donors’ accounts without a court order.
Assiniboine went as far as having its staff members monitor the man’s social media posts, as well as comb through his checking account transactions.
Management at Assiniboine noted that before the EA was enacted, “account activity was being monitored but not deemed illegal.”
Police noted in a memo that same day that the credit union member in question was a “well known anti-vax” person, suggesting the tip from the credit union was followed up on.
In another instance of financial institutions using the EA as a reason to go after their customers, the same report shows that an unnamed Canadian bank had also reported to police one of its credit card users who had allegedly purchased a gas mask from an army surplus store.
This information was shown in a February 17 email, with police noting “It won’t come as a surprise but a bank has frozen assets of an individual and they also disclosed that a purchase was recently made at an Ottawa Army Surplus store.”
“Most likely a gas mask,” added the RCMP.
These recent revelations are not the first instances of Canadian financial institutions reporting their customers to the police due to their political views.
As noted last month by LifeSiteNews, records show Desjardins Group also reported to the RCMP some of its customers who were making financial transactions supporting the Freedom Convoy.
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The bank had reported a couple that made a $20,000 deposit, which the bank claimed was being used to pay for pro-Freedom Convoy signs.
Trudeau’s use of the EA led to almost $8 million in funds from 267 different people being frozen, in addition to 170 bitcoin wallets.
The full impact of Trudeau’s cabinet’s use of the EA to expand the scope of the Proceeds Of Crime And Terrorist Financing Act to allow for such freezing has yet to be determined by a parliamentary committee.
Last month during a round-table discussion at the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC), panel member Dr. Gerard Kennedy, who along with other POEC members was tasked with advising government officials on future policy in light of the Freedom Convoy, seemed to agree with the controversial freezing measures taken by the Trudeau government, saying it was “efficacious” and “even justified” for banks to freeze the assets of demonstrators for protesting government COVID measures.
During testimony before the POEC last month, it was also revealed that one Canadian bank executive suggested Freedom Convoy protesters could be labeled as “terrorists” to allow for a quick freezing of their funds.
Finance Minister Chyrstia Freeland’s testimony before the commission showed that she even agreed with one Canadian bank CEO’s call for possible military intervention in the Freedom Convoy.
With the POEC’s public policy phase coming to a close two weeks ago, they are now tasked with releasing a report to Canada’s parliament and Senate with their findings and recommendations by February 20, 2023.
A Vindictive Crown Thwarted in Attempt to Revoke Tamara Lich’s Bail for Accepting Free Speech Award
Chalk up a small but important victory for free speech. Bail is supposed to help ensure that the accused will appear for trial and will not commit the alleged offence prior to trial. All too often in Canada, it is used as a way to gag a dissident prior to trial, which might be many months away. After initially being denied bail for a non-violent offence (counselling mischief), Lich was granted bail in March, but on condition that she leave Ontario (be out of Dodge by sunset) and not access social media. When the Crown learned she was to receive the George Jonas Freedom Award from the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedom, it was outraged. Canada’s increasingly politicized justice system was furious that a person they\d condemned to be a pariah and non-person was to receive a public honour and award. They sought to have her thrown back in prison — but we support democracy in the Ukraine, right? Her lawyers sought to amend her bail conditions. Today, Tamara Lich escaped prison and has some of her freedoms back. Nevertheless, she still is gagged and banned from the social media.
Paul Fromm
Director,
Canadian Association for Free Expression
‘The courts are not a thought police,’ judge says in Tamara Lich bail review decision
The ‘Freedom Convoy’ organizer is again allowed to enter Ontario, but remains restricted from using social media. Author of the article: Aedan Helmer Publishing date:
A judge’s ruling has kept in place a ban on Tamara Lich using social media while she awaits trial. Photo by Errol McGihon /Postmedia
Tamara Lich will not be sent back to jail as a judge lifted her ban from entering Ontario, but ruled to reinforce her ban from social media in a bail review decision Wednesday.
“The courts are not a thought police,” Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips said as he rejected the Crown’s arguments that Lich should have her bail revoked over alleged breaches of her release conditions.
“We seek only to control conduct to the extent that certain behaviour will violate, or likely lead to violation of the law,” the judge continued. “Here, the objective was to keep a highly problematic street protest from reviving or reoccurring … No court would ever seek to control the possession or manifestation of political views.”
The Crown had argued that Lich breached the condition that bars her from supporting “anything related” to the “Freedom Convoy” when she accepted the 2022 “George Jonas Freedom Award,” which she is set to receive in a June 16 gala in Toronto hosted by the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.
Lawrence Greenspon, Lich’s lawyer, said the judge’s ruling would allow his client to travel to Toronto to accept the award in person, and he confirmed she also intended to attend similar gala events in Calgary and Vancouver, where VIP tickets cost $500.
In a phone interview following the decision, Greenspon applauded the judge for “soundly rejecting” the Crown’s efforts to send Lich back to jail.
“From our perspective, this was a clear rejection of the Crown’s attempt to reincarcerate Ms. Lich for agreeing to accept a ‘freedom award,’ and, in light of this decision, she’s going to be able to go to Toronto and accept that award without fear of being reincarcerated.
“That’s a great relief to her,” Greenspon said. “This effort to reincarcerate her … the battle of freedom of expression and freedom of assembly … that battle will be fought at trial.”
The JCCF, a vocal supporter of the demonstration, issued a statement following the decision saying the revised bail conditions “still excessively restrict” Lich’s Charter rights, while saying the Crown went to “troubling” lengths to revoke her bail.
Phillips also lifted Lich’s ban from entering Ontario in his revised bail plan and lifted her ban on entering the city of Ottawa, except for the geographical boundaries of the city’s downtown core.
A publication ban protects the reason Lich is seeking permission to return to Ottawa, and Phillips said he saw no issue with Lich attending a gala in Toronto months after the convoy had ended.
“The right between attendance at that function and problematic support for a demonstration that will, by then, have been long over, is so indirect as to be barely perceptible,” Phillips said.
He decided to uphold Lich’s ban from social media, however, ruling the original March 7 court order was “warranted and appropriate.”
“In a very real way, social media undoubtedly contributed to, and even drove the now-impugned conduct, and Ms. Lich staying away from it is necessary to lower the risk of reoffence to an acceptable level,” Phillips ruled.
“Social media can be a problematic feedback loop where people get egged-on and caught up by group activity they would never perform on their own,” Phillips intoned.
He warned Lich to avoid the temptation posed by social media and cited her “susceptibility to getting caught up in the sort of toxic groupthink that animated the crowd back in February.”
Lich was arrested Feb. 17 and is jointly charged with fellow protest organizer Chris Barber with mischief, obstructing police, counselling others to commit mischief and intimidation.
She was initially denied bail on Feb. 22, though that decision was overturned by Superior Court Justice John Johnston on March 7 and Lich was released from jail with a list of conditions. She was ordered to return home to Medicine Hat, Alta., where she must live under the supervision of a court-approved surety, and she is barred from contacting a list of fellow protest organizers. She remains banned from social media and cannot allow anyone to post on her behalf.
Assistant Crown Attorney Moiz Karimjee presented arguments during last week’s two-day bail review alleging Lich had broken two of her release conditions, first by accepting the “freedom award” and again by accepting a convoy-themed pendant as a gift from a supporter, who then posted a photo of Lich proudly wearing the necklace. The social media post identified Lich as the “brand ambassador” for the pendant.
Phillips on Wednesday said the Crown failed to prove those breaches.
The judge accepted Lich’s testimony that she saw no “live connection” between accepting the pendant — or accepting the award — and her support for the “Freedom Convoy.”
“I believe Ms. Lich when she says she does not see her acceptance of this award to be any sort of support for the ‘Freedom Convoy,’ because that initiative is over with,” the judge said. “I specifically reject the idea that she is responsible for what someone else did with a photo of her wearing a pendant.”
Lich has lived in her community for a “meaningful stretch” and demonstrated she can follow bail conditions, the judge said.
Captain Airhead Throws Off His Mask and Stomps it Into the Ground
Before he became Prime Minister, Captain Airhead was asked about what government he admired the most. His answer was to praise the “basic dictatorship” of Red China.
This past week he has demonstrated, yet again, that this was not just him saying something stupid off the cuff. It is how he actually thinks. It is not like we had no warning.
The week prior to that, Matt Taibbi had said that this was his Ceaușescu moment. This was in reference to the final days of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu who, as the Iron Curtain was crumbling, Communism was in retreat, and his populace were uniting against him, clung to the delusion that he was secure in power and could do whatever he wanted. It would appear that Captain Airhead has decided to make this his Tiananmen Square moment instead. It is astonishing that someone as focused on his image as Captain Airhead – his image is all that there is to him, he has no substance whatsoever – would think this a good move.
In a bid to upgrade himself from Captain Airhead to Generalissimo Airhead, he began the week on St. Valentine’s Day by announcing that he was invoking the Emergency Measures Act to crush a peaceful protest. The Freedom Convoy protest was initiated by long-haul truckers a few weeks ago when, as governments around the world began easing bat flu restrictions, and provincial governments began to talk of doing the same, Captain Airhead decided to do the opposite. His Health Minister announced that he would be talking with provincial governments about imposing universal vaccine mandates. The government of Lower Canada then took the step of announcing that it would introduce a significant tax on the unvaccinated. Even as this was going on, the Omicron variant was disproving the government’s claims that vaccines are the only way out of the pandemic and that the unvaccinated are to blame for how long it has gone on. Meanwhile Captain Airhead removed, not a restriction, but an exemption to a restriction – the exemption for long-haul truck drivers to the vaccine mandate for crossing the border with the USA. There was no reasonable justification for this. It was just Captain Airhead, like the current occupant of the White House who did the same, being a dick. The next thing you know, truckers descended on Ottawa in the largest convoy in history, parked their trucks along Wellington Street where Parliament is located, and announced their intention to not leave until all the basic Charter rights and freedoms that had been curtailed during the pandemic had been restored.
Remember that. The Freedom Convoy was a single issue protest. That issue is freedom which is not, as the idiots at the CBC tried to claim, a codeword for something nefarious, racist, and extremist. Freedom is itself a basic right, and specific freedoms are identified as “fundamental” in the second section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Each of these has been severely curtailed by public health order over the last two years. Vaccine mandates – telling people that they have to agree to have a foreign substance injected into their veins or lose their jobs, livelihoods, and everything if they don’t – are the biggest affront to freedom we have seen in the name of public health yet. The freedoms the Freedom Convoy wants restored, not just for themselves but for all Canadians, are these freedoms, freedoms supposedly guaranteed by our constitution, spelled out in the Charter the adding of which to our constitution, Captain Airhead’s father oversaw. Captain Airhead thinks very little of freedom. Just before the Freedom Convoy started a video of an interview he had given a Lower Canadian television station last September before the last Dominion election resurfaced. In it he hurled all sorts of abuse at people who believe that they should be free to decide for themselves what they put in their bodies and actually suggested that we should be asking whether we should tolerate such people as a society.
The Freedom Convoy has been, despite Captain Airhead’s claim to the contrary, a peaceful protest. The truckers and the massive number of other Canadians who turned up to support them did not engage in the sort of violent and destructive behaviour that is typical of the kind of protests Captain Airhead endorses, like anti-pipeline environmentalist protests, Black Lives Matters riots, or the Cultural Maoist Year Zero assault on Canadian history that took place last summer. The most violent incident until this week was when, during a related protest in Winnipeg, somebody drove his vehicle into the crowd. This person was an Antifa thug, attacking the protestors, not the protestors assaulting anybody else.
Note that I said “until this week”. There has been more violence this week, but once again it was violence perpetrated against the protestors rather than by them. This time it was violence by the state. On Friday, as Captain Airhead suspended the Parliamentary debate on his illegal power grab – and it is illegal, because even if he manages to get enough votes in Parliament to confirm it the situation does not meet the requirements of the Emergency Measures Act itself for its own invocation – he sent his stormtroopers in to crush those protesters who were speaking out for all Canadians who still believe that their freedom belongs to them and is not the Prime Minister’s to give and take away at will. Ottawa police, armed with riot gear, descended upon the protestors on horseback, trampling and beating them. Journalists like Andrew Lawton who were there reporting on this violent crackdown on peaceful protestors were also attacked with pepper spray by the police. Indeed, the next morning a journalist, Alexa Lavoie was clubbed by the police and shot in the leg with a gun loaded with tear gas. No, contrary to what the Ottawa police and legacy media are saying, the police are not acting in self defence.
The weekend prior, GiveSendGo, the crowdfunding platform that the Freedom Convoy had turned to after GoFundMe, at the behest of Captain Airhead, had cancelled their fundraiser and announced that they would be giving the money to other causes instead (backing down on this and refunding the donors only when threatened with fraud investigations by American authorities) had been hacked, The hacked information on the donors was then published, in some cases on social media by people like Captain Airhead’s disgraced former adviser Butts, in others by media organizations sympathetic to Captain Airhead, including the Ottawa Citizen, the Washington Post, and even the Crown broadcaster the CBC. Predictably this led to donors being harassed and threatened by woke goons and in some cases fired and forced to close their businesses. The hacking and releasing of hacked information is illegal in itself, of course, and in this case it is also a huge act of violence – incitement – against the protestors – and their supporters – which can be laid at Captain Airhead’s feet. It failed to accomplish what was presumably Captain Airhead’s intention – bolstering his claim that the protest is an insurrection on the part of Nazis funded by foreign organizations and governments. The hacked data instead revealed that while there were more American donors, most of the money had come from Canadians, most of the donations were small, and the larger donations were from people who cannot be credibly accused of being the sort of people Captain Airhead claims were funding the Convoy.
His other attempt at backing up his false claims against the protestors by trying to tie them to a cache of arms captured near Coutts failed as well. The people with the weapons were not part of the main body of the Coutts border blockade, which was peacefully resolved without the use of Captain Airhead’s extra powers, and when Captain Airhead’s new Public Safety Minister attempted to make the connection between the armed group and the Freedom Convoy organizers he was unable to do so convincingly when faced with tough questions from the media.
Meanwhile in Parliament this week, Captain Airhead and the ministers under him dodged questions about the justification for their actions by giving non-answers, telling outright lies, attacking the members of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition collectively and individually, or simply walking out of the House.
None of this behaviour on his part should surprise anyone. Even if his remarks about China’s “basic dictatorship” were taken as a poor joke the fact that the man is a control freak, who thinks he can do whatever he wants, who has no shame whatsoever, who will shed false tears about the misdeeds, supposed and actual, of past Canadian leaders, but who never gives a real apology for anything he has done wrong himself has been evident throughout his premiership. Whenever he praises our “democracy” by “democracy” he means “elected dictatorship”. Several years ago he bailed out the Crown broadcaster, the CBC, and the larger privately-owned legacy media companies, to the tune of billions of dollars. When he did so he cited the importance of a free media in a democracy. He did so with a straight face. The effect of his bailout, of course, was that the media in Canada became anything but free. The legacy media, Crown and private, had long had a Liberal bias, but now they began to resemble the sycophantic press of North Korea. A free media is important to a functioning democracy because it keeps tabs on the government, reports their misdoings, and calls them out. Captain Airhead has taken a most adversarial attitude towards the few private media companies who continue to do this. He has several times banned them from election debates – the courts had to overrule him. Clearly what Captain Airhead means by a free media is a media controlled by him and free of dissent from his views. Such a media is indeed important to “democracy” in his sense of “elected dictatorship”.
When Canada was founded, the Fathers of Confederation made sure to bestow upon us the best form of government the world has ever known, the parliamentary monarchy system, under which personal freedom has historically flourished like under none other. It has been almost a century since the first attempt by a Liberal Prime Minister – William Lyon Mackenzie King – to subvert the sovereignty of Crown-in-Parliament and turn the Prime Minister’s Office into a de facto elected dictatorship. This was a serious assault on our constitution which has had lasting damage, but Mackenzie King’s dictatorial instincts were mild in comparison to those of the first Prime Minister Trudeau, who never met a Communist dictator he didn’t like. Captain Airhead, however, makes his father look like a humble man with an abhorrence of the abuse of government power by comparison.
By suspending Parliamentary debate on the day he ordered a violent crackdown on a peaceful protest he has made it impossible to conceal his true nature any longer, not that it was particularly well concealed before. Those who cannot see him for what he is now, never will. Indeed, those who cannot see him for what he is now, cannot see anything at all. —
Before he became Prime Minister, Captain Airhead was asked about what government he admired the most. His answer was to praise the “basic dictatorship” of Red China.
This past week he has demonstrated, yet again, that this was not just him saying something stupid off the cuff. It is how he actually thinks. It is not like we had no warning.
The week prior to that, Matt Taibbi had said that this was his Ceaușescu moment. This was in reference to the final days of Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceaușescu who, as the Iron Curtain was crumbling, Communism was in retreat, and his populace were uniting against him, clung to the delusion that he was secure in power and could do whatever he wanted. It would appear that Captain Airhead has decided to make this his Tiananmen Square moment instead. It is astonishing that someone as focused on his image as Captain Airhead – his image is all that there is to him, he has no substance whatsoever – would think this a good move.
In a bid to upgrade himself from Captain Airhead to Generalissimo Airhead, he began the week on St. Valentine’s Day by announcing that he was invoking the Emergency Measures Act to crush a peaceful protest. The Freedom Convoy protest was initiated by long-haul truckers a few weeks ago when, as governments around the world began easing bat flu restrictions, and provincial governments began to talk of doing the same, Captain Airhead decided to do the opposite. His Health Minister announced that he would be talking with provincial governments about imposing universal vaccine mandates. The government of Lower Canada then took the step of announcing that it would introduce a significant tax on the unvaccinated. Even as this was going on, the Omicron variant was disproving the government’s claims that vaccines are the only way out of the pandemic and that the unvaccinated are to blame for how long it has gone on. Meanwhile Captain Airhead removed, not a restriction, but an exemption to a restriction – the exemption for long-haul truck drivers to the vaccine mandate for crossing the border with the USA. There was no reasonable justification for this. It was just Captain Airhead, like the current occupant of the White House who did the same, being a dick. The next thing you know, truckers descended on Ottawa in the largest convoy in history, parked their trucks along Wellington Street where Parliament is located, and announced their intention to not leave until all the basic Charter rights and freedoms that had been curtailed during the pandemic had been restored.
Remember that. The Freedom Convoy was a single issue protest. That issue is freedom which is not, as the idiots at the CBC tried to claim, a codeword for something nefarious, racist, and extremist. Freedom is itself a basic right, and specific freedoms are identified as “fundamental” in the second section of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms. Each of these has been severely curtailed by public health order over the last two years. Vaccine mandates – telling people that they have to agree to have a foreign substance injected into their veins or lose their jobs, livelihoods, and everything if they don’t – are the biggest affront to freedom we have seen in the name of public health yet. The freedoms the Freedom Convoy wants restored, not just for themselves but for all Canadians, are these freedoms, freedoms supposedly guaranteed by our constitution, spelled out in the Charter the adding of which to our constitution, Captain Airhead’s father oversaw. Captain Airhead thinks very little of freedom. Just before the Freedom Convoy started a video of an interview he had given a Lower Canadian television station last September before the last Dominion election resurfaced. In it he hurled all sorts of abuse at people who believe that they should be free to decide for themselves what they put in their bodies and actually suggested that we should be asking whether we should tolerate such people as a society.
The Freedom Convoy has been, despite Captain Airhead’s claim to the contrary, a peaceful protest. The truckers and the massive number of other Canadians who turned up to support them did not engage in the sort of violent and destructive behaviour that is typical of the kind of protests Captain Airhead endorses, like anti-pipeline environmentalist protests, Black Lives Matters riots, or the Cultural Maoist Year Zero assault on Canadian history that took place last summer. The most violent incident until this week was when, during a related protest in Winnipeg, somebody drove his vehicle into the crowd. This person was an Antifa thug, attacking the protestors, not the protestors assaulting anybody else.
Note that I said “until this week”. There has been more violence this week, but once again it was violence perpetrated against the protestors rather than by them. This time it was violence by the state. On Friday, as Captain Airhead suspended the Parliamentary debate on his illegal power grab – and it is illegal, because even if he manages to get enough votes in Parliament to confirm it the situation does not meet the requirements of the Emergency Measures Act itself for its own invocation – he sent his stormtroopers in to crush those protesters who were speaking out for all Canadians who still believe that their freedom belongs to them and is not the Prime Minister’s to give and take away at will. Ottawa police, armed with riot gear, descended upon the protestors on horseback, trampling and beating them. Journalists like Andrew Lawton who were there reporting on this violent crackdown on peaceful protestors were also attacked with pepper spray by the police. Indeed, the next morning a journalist, Alexa Lavoie was clubbed by the police and shot in the leg with a gun loaded with tear gas. No, contrary to what the Ottawa police and legacy media are saying, the police are not acting in self defence.
The weekend prior, GiveSendGo, the crowdfunding platform that the Freedom Convoy had turned to after GoFundMe, at the behest of Captain Airhead, had cancelled their fundraiser and announced that they would be giving the money to other causes instead (backing down on this and refunding the donors only when threatened with fraud investigations by American authorities) had been hacked, The hacked information on the donors was then published, in some cases on social media by people like Captain Airhead’s disgraced former adviser Butts, in others by media organizations sympathetic to Captain Airhead, including the Ottawa Citizen, the Washington Post, and even the Crown broadcaster the CBC. Predictably this led to donors being harassed and threatened by woke goons and in some cases fired and forced to close their businesses. The hacking and releasing of hacked information is illegal in itself, of course, and in this case it is also a huge act of violence – incitement – against the protestors – and their supporters – which can be laid at Captain Airhead’s feet. It failed to accomplish what was presumably Captain Airhead’s intention – bolstering his claim that the protest is an insurrection on the part of Nazis funded by foreign organizations and governments. The hacked data instead revealed that while there were more American donors, most of the money had come from Canadians, most of the donations were small, and the larger donations were from people who cannot be credibly accused of being the sort of people Captain Airhead claims were funding the Convoy.
His other attempt at backing up his false claims against the protestors by trying to tie them to a cache of arms captured near Coutts failed as well. The people with the weapons were not part of the main body of the Coutts border blockade, which was peacefully resolved without the use of Captain Airhead’s extra powers, and when Captain Airhead’s new Public Safety Minister attempted to make the connection between the armed group and the Freedom Convoy organizers he was unable to do so convincingly when faced with tough questions from the media.
Meanwhile in Parliament this week, Captain Airhead and the ministers under him dodged questions about the justification for their actions by giving non-answers, telling outright lies, attacking the members of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition collectively and individually, or simply walking out of the House.
None of this behaviour on his part should surprise anyone. Even if his remarks about China’s “basic dictatorship” were taken as a poor joke the fact that the man is a control freak, who thinks he can do whatever he wants, who has no shame whatsoever, who will shed false tears about the misdeeds, supposed and actual, of past Canadian leaders, but who never gives a real apology for anything he has done wrong himself has been evident throughout his premiership. Whenever he praises our “democracy” by “democracy” he means “elected dictatorship”. Several years ago he bailed out the Crown broadcaster, the CBC, and the larger privately-owned legacy media companies, to the tune of billions of dollars. When he did so he cited the importance of a free media in a democracy. He did so with a straight face. The effect of his bailout, of course, was that the media in Canada became anything but free. The legacy media, Crown and private, had long had a Liberal bias, but now they began to resemble the sycophantic press of North Korea. A free media is important to a functioning democracy because it keeps tabs on the government, reports their misdoings, and calls them out. Captain Airhead has taken a most adversarial attitude towards the few private media companies who continue to do this. He has several times banned them from election debates – the courts had to overrule him. Clearly what Captain Airhead means by a free media is a media controlled by him and free of dissent from his views. Such a media is indeed important to “democracy” in his sense of “elected dictatorship”.
When Canada was founded, the Fathers of Confederation made sure to bestow upon us the best form of government the world has ever known, the parliamentary monarchy system, under which personal freedom has historically flourished like under none other. It has been almost a century since the first attempt by a Liberal Prime Minister – William Lyon Mackenzie King – to subvert the sovereignty of Crown-in-Parliament and turn the Prime Minister’s Office into a de facto elected dictatorship. This was a serious assault on our constitution which has had lasting damage, but Mackenzie King’s dictatorial instincts were mild in comparison to those of the first Prime Minister Trudeau, who never met a Communist dictator he didn’t like. Captain Airhead, however, makes his father look like a humble man with an abhorrence of the abuse of government power by comparison.
‘Freedom convoys’ taking to Hwy. 401, 402 for large-scale protest Saturday
Author of the article: Free Press staff Publishing date: Mar 04, 2022 • 10 hours ago • 2 minute read • 233 Comments
Supporters line the Wellington Road overpass on Highway 401 to cheer on vehicles heading to January’s “Freedom Convoy” protest in Ottawa. Protesters will take to the 401 and 402 Saturday as part of a Canada-wide protest. (Dale Carruthers/The London Free Press)
Convoys protesting COVID-19 measures plan to take to 400-series highways in Southwestern Ontario Saturday as part of a Canada-wide protest.
Multiple social media pages are promoting the weekend protests on highways 401 and 402 as part of a cross-Canada “freedom chain.”
London participants are meeting at the Flying J truck stop on Highbury Avenue at 1:30 p.m. and driving to Woodstock and Waterloo, for a march at Waterloo Town Square, according to a Facebook page promoting the event.
“Bring them flags, decorate them vehicles, don’t forget to honk them horns. Let’s roll,” a protest poster says.
OPP and Waterloo regional police said Friday they will monitor the planned protests.
Other convoys plan to leave Sarnia, Windsor and London Saturday morning, according to social media posts. Some will continue north through Toronto and Barrie to Brock, a township south of Lake Simcoe about 30 kilometres west of Lindsay.
Protests against COVID restrictions and mandates have rolled through Southwestern Ontario centres on recent weekends. They began in late January to support the so-called Freedom Convoy that occupied downtown Ottawa for three weeks and closed Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge for a week before being broken up by police.
An Ottawa-bound convoy passed through Southwestern Ontario Jan. 27, when supporters along the 401 cheered passing vehicles, many carrying Canadian flags and signs disparaging Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Another convoy is set for London Saturday afternoon, marking the fifth straight weekend that a protest has passed through the city.
“We are monitoring for any potential events . . . and will share on social media if we are aware of anything that will impact the community,” London police Const. Sandasha Bough said by email.
This week, London police urged demonstrators to follow the rules of the road and respect local businesses. During past convoys, officers have been stationed at hospital entrances to ensure protests don’t disrupt patients and staff access.
The police, armed with riot gear, are brutalizing and arresting peaceful demonstrators from the truckers’ convoy.
Meanwhile, Parliament is not sitting today because of this police operation. All parties agreed to stay away while the regime cracks down on dissidents.
Just like in a banana republic.
They should have been debating Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act replaced the War Measures Act in 1988. The only other times in Canadian history that it was invoked were during the First and Second World Wars, and during the October Crisis in 1970.
There is no emergency in Canada. No war, no insurrection, no terrorist attack, no sanitary or environmental catastrophe that justifies invoking this law.
It’s outright illegal, undemocratic, and unconstitutional for this government to give itself exceptional powers to deal with peaceful demonstrators.
It’s a power grab on Trudeau’s part to crush dissidence, that’s all it is.
Trudeau and his Finance minister Chrystia Freeland have given themselves the power to freeze the bank accounts not only of the organizers of the Freedom Convoy, but of anyone who is suspected of helping and funding them.
And we’re supposed to believe that a government that has violated our Constitution and our rights and freedoms for two year will not abuse these new powers?
Frederick, it’s a dark day for Canada.
But it’s not over. We will continue to fight this authoritarian government, and bring back freedom, respect and justice to this country.
The Ontario government has secured a court order to freeze access to millions of dollars donated to the Freedom Convoy through crowdfunding platform GiveSendGo.
Premier Doug Ford’s office said in a statement Thursday evening that the attorney general brought an application to the Ontario Superior Court of Justice under Section 490.8 of the Criminal Code of Canada.
This application, said the premier’s office, sought to prohibit people from “disposing of, or otherwise dealing with” donations made through the Freedom Convoy and Adopt-A-Trucker pages on GiveSendGo.
“This afternoon, the order was issued,” said the premier’s office in a statement on Thursday. “It binds any and all parties with possession or control over these donations.”
The Freedom Convoy’s organizers and lawyer were not immediately available for comment although spokesperson Benjamin Dichter did joke about the GiveSendGo being frozen in a tweet.
Police confront Freedom Convoy protesters in downtown Ottawa.Shutterstock
