A charge of mischief has been dropped against a man accused of being one of the leaders of the protest that blocked Windsor’s Ambassador Bridge in February 2022.
Mr. Laframboise’s lawyer, Alan Honner, said there were several reasons for the charge being dropped. “I think number one, the Crown’s evidence wasn’t as strong as they thought it would be,” he told The Epoch Times. There were also “serious matters that were vying for trial time in a backlogged court system,” the news release said.
Mr. Laframboise, who is from Windsor, told The Epoch Times he had mixed feelings about the charge being withdrawn.
“It was a relief, just to be done and dealt with it,” he said. “[But] I didn’t really get to prove myself innocent ... I wish I would have had my day in court and actually proved them wrong.”
The protest at the Ambassador Bridge blocked traffic from Windsor to Detroit for almost a week beginning on Feb. 7, 2022. The bridge is the busiest international crossing in North America, with millions of dollars in goods crossing it every day.
Hundreds of police, including RCMP and Windsor Police, cleared the blockade after a court injunction, but before the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14.
Mr. Laframboise dismisses the suggestion he had any role as an organizer, saying he wasn’t even able to get behind police barricades and join other protesters at the bridge.
“From day one, I’ve been adamant on the fact that ... I wanted to protest, and they wouldn’t let me protest,” he said.
Mr. Laframboise said on the day he arrived at the bridge, Feb. 9, the intersection at Huron Church Road was blocked by police. He said he told police he wanted to join protesters and was told he would have to walk.
Since he had recently had hip surgery and didn’t want to walk, he remained in his pickup truck. “I sat in my vehicle waiting to go in,” he said.
“Calling me an organizer ... I have absolutely no clue how they came to that,” he said.
He went home that evening and returned the next day, when it was much the same story.
After those two days at the Windsor protest, he said he joined the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. “We were just trying to protest” federal COVID-19 restrictions that required cross-border truckers to be vaccinated, he said.
He had to give up a truck route in the United States that he enjoyed, he said. “So that’s part of the reasoning ... mainly the overreach of the Canadian government.”
“At the end of the day, the blockades may not have impacted the trucking industry as much as other supply chain challenges, such as ongoing driver shortages, rising fuel costs and part shortages, such as the computer chips needed to make automobiles,” the study concluded.
Mr. Laframboise said any harm that the protests caused the economy was smaller than the damage being done by federal policies like the carbon tax, which are the type of policies the protesters were trying to stand up to.
“Everybody in my work ... they can’t go get a house right now because of the economy that we’re in,” he said. “Everybody lost more money from [Prime Minister Justin] Trudeau over the last four years than they did from the trucker convoy.”
Police arrested several dozen people as they cleared the blockade, but Mr. Laframboise was arrested about six months afterward, said the Democracy Fund.
“His arrest was the result of an ongoing police investigation which sought to identify an organizer of the protests,” said the news release.
The Democracy Fund said it represented about a third of those arrested. Mr. Laframboise was the last of its clients facing trial over the Ambassador Bridge protest, while the conviction of one other client is under appeal.
