OTTAWA—Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Lich did not conspire with Chris Barber to break any laws when organizing the protest against COVID-19 mandates, and Crown lawyers have not submitted sufficient evidence to prove that she did, her lawyer said in his closing arguments.
“None of the actions of Tamara Lich that you have in evidence in this case are, on their face, unlawful,” defence lawyer Eric Granger said in court on Aug. 20.
“If one were to look at specifically the actions and words of Tamara Lich,” he said, “respectfully, the Crown would have no case.”
Lich and Barber are charged with mischief, intimidation, and counselling others to break the law, while Barber is also accused of counselling others to disobey a court order. Their trial, which was initially supposed to last just 17 days, has dragged on for nearly a year due to technical glitches, legal arguments, and court delays.
The pair were the primary leaders of the 2022 Freedom Convoy, which was started in response to COVID-19-related public health restrictions and vaccine mandates and saw hundreds of vehicles gather in Ottawa for three weeks. The federal government invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time in history on Feb. 14 to help bring the protest to an end, and Lich and Barber were arrested on Feb. 17.
Crown lawyers have argued that the case against Lich and Barber is “overwhelming,” and that while they are not on trial for their politics, they are being charged for the “unlawful means that they employed to pursue their political and end goals.”
Crown attorney Siobhain Wetscher reiterated in her closing argument on Aug. 13 that the protest’s noise, traffic congestion, and harassment took the protest “outside the spectrum of what would be considered lawful demonstration.”
Granger said many of the facts that the Crown had worked to establish were not in dispute, such as that the two organizers led a convoy to Ottawa, that their protest group was the prominent one in the city, and that they encouraged others to stay in Ottawa. But Granger said these facts did not establish that Lich had done anything unlawful, or that there was a “common unlawful design” between her and Barber.
The Crown introduced a Carter application at the onset of the trial, which stipulates that Barber and Lich worked together so closely that the evidence brought forward against one of them should apply to both. Justice Heather Perkins-McVey has yet to rule on the application.
Argument Against Carter Application
Arguing in favour of its Carter application, the Crown previously highlighted a Jan. 20, 2022, text message between Barber and Lich referring to “a strategy to gridlock the city,” with Lich saying she did not want to “make those decisions on my own.” Crown lawyers suggested this meant a decision needed to be made and Lich had the authority to make it alongside Barber.Granger, however, rejected the argument that the text showed Lich was part of the strategy or agreed with it. The evidence showed many different groups were protesting in Ottawa, and it was an “oversimplification” to suggest that Lich had control over all of them, said Granger.
Granger also noted that the Carter application is often used to prosecute drug trafficking or murder cases where the objective is illegal. In this case, he said, the act of protesting itself was not illegal.
Justice Perkins-McVey asked whether there were examples of cases where the alleged conspiracy was not in itself unlawful.
Lich’s lawyers are expected to continue their final arguments on Aug. 23.
