Freedom Convoy Sentencing: Lawyers Request Absolute Discharge, Sentencing to Come in October

OTTAWA—Lawyers for Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are requesting an absolute discharge for their clients, telling an Ottawa court that the two encouraged protesters to remain peaceful and cooperate with police.

Meanwhile, Justice Heather Perkins-McVey, who is presiding over the court, said on July 24 that she will announce sentences for the two in October.

Crown prosecutors are seeking seven years in prison for Lich and eight years for Barber for their roles in the three-week trucker protest against COVID-19 vaccine mandates and pandemic restrictions in Ottawa. The two were found guilty of mischief and Barber was found guilty of counselling others to disobey a court order, but the two were not found guilty of counselling mischief, intimidation, obstructing police, or counselling others to obstruct police.

Crown prosecutors have also said they want to seize and auction Barber’s truck, dubbed the “Big Red,” which he used to travel from Saskatchewan to Ottawa for the three-week protest and was an icon of the protest movement.

The court will reconvene on Sept. 12 for a forfeiture hearing of “Big Red,” while the sentencing decision will be announced on Oct. 7.

Sentencing Arguments

During the sentencing hearing on July 23, Crown prosecutor Siobhan Wetscher had said Lich and Barber were “criminally responsible for extraordinary harm” to Ottawa residents, which was why they were pushing for the “upper range” of prison time for mischief sentences.

Wetscher also said while the trucker convoy was not a violent demonstration, it was also “not peaceful.” She said Lich and Barber were not on trial for their beliefs, but for counselling others to “break the law, paralyze the city, or flout police and court orders under the banner of a peaceful protest.”

On July 24, defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon representing Lich said the Crown had been “facile and inaccurate” when saying the two were being prosecuted not for their political beliefs, but for the way they chose to express them. He added that his client had used peaceful and lawful means to protest, had never advocated for violence or unlawfulness, and made “considerable efforts to mitigate the consequences” of the means utilized by others to protest.

“The means which Tamara Lich advocated were consistently peaceful and lawful. … There was nothing criminal about the means that Tamara Lich ever put forward,” Greenspon said, adding that the two were being prosecuted because of the “means used by a minority of protesters present.”

Greenspon also noted that the Freedom Convoy had a positive impact on thousands of Canadians. The lawyer became emotional when reading several letters of support sent to Lich by Canadians who said the Freedom Convoy gave them hope after two years of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions.

Barber’s lawyer Diane Magas had presented her case on behalf of her client the day before, saying the sentencing sought by the Crown was not proportionate to the mischief charges the judge found him guilty of.

Magas called the eight years sought by the Crown “excessive, unfit, unduly harsh, cruel, and unusual.”

Defence Cites Proportionality Principle

Lich’s other defence lawyer Eric Granger said that sentencing her to seven years of jail time would be the “highest sentence anyone has ever received” for the crime of mischief. Granger also noted the proportionality principle in Canadian law, which states that judges must impose “the least restrictive sanction appropriate in the circumstances.”

Granger noted that in the case of Normand Dubé, who vandalized Hydro-Québec’s high-voltage lines in 2014 and caused 180,000 people to lose power, the defence sought three years of jail time and he was sentenced to seven years in jail. Granger said the fact that the Crown is seeking a similar sentence “highlights the inappropriateness” of their request.

The defence lawyer also noted that Freedom Convoy organizer Pat King was sentenced to three months of house arrest and 100 hours of community service on top of nine months spent in jail. This sentence came after he was charged with two counts of disobeying a court order and one each of mischief, counselling to commit mischief, and counselling to obstruct police.

Granger said Lich and Barber attempted to distance themselves from King, saying Lich acted in a different manner toward Ottawa residents, and this put her “in an entirely different category, an entirely different paradigm, where an entirely lower sentence is justified when one applies appropriately.”

Crown prosecutor Wetscher said that while Lich and Barber had helped those who had spoken in her support, the judge should not lose sight of the “significant harm their actions caused to many residents and businesses in the city.”

“Ms. Lich and Mr. Barber and the Freedom Convoy demonstrators may have seen this as one person called a ‘love fest,’ but this court cannot lose sight of the fact that not everyone felt that way,” she said.