The crown is calling for conviction while defence argues protestors were following orders.
Prosecutors and defence teams presented two widely divergent views of the 2022 convoy protest as they made their closing arguments in the long-running trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber in the last week of August.
Crown attorneys Tim Radcliffe and Siobhain Wetscher said they had an “overwhelming” case for convicting the two accused convoy leaders on each of the criminal counts they face: mischief, intimidation, obstructing police and counselling others at the demonstration to commit the same offences.
The defence elected to call no evidence or witnesses to testify, relying instead on final submissions, which were submitted in writing to Justice Heather Perkins-McVey and argued over four days of hearings.
Lich’s defence lawyers, Lawrence Greenspon and Eric Granger, and Barber’s defence team of Diane Magas and Marwa Younes, argued their clients were welcomed into the downtown core by Ottawa police, they worked with city officials to reduce the protest’s “footprint” and co-operated with police throughout the three-week demonstration.
When will this come to an end? Perkins-McVey indicated she would deliver her verdict sometime within the next six months, though she hoped it wouldn’t take nearly that long. Until then, here’s a closer look at each charge against Lich and Barber, and what the prosecution and defence are saying to make their case.
The Case for Mischief
Click a card for more on each side’s position.
The Case for Intimidation
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The Case for Obstruction
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The Case for Counselling
Evening Update
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The Charter vs. the Criminal Code
The Crown has insisted that Lich and Barber “are not on trial for their political beliefs, but for the means they employed to meet their end — to compel the federal government to end COVID-19 mandates.”
The noise, fumes, traffic congestion and gridlock, the scale and duration of the demonstration, along with the harassment residents faced, all put the convoy “outside the spectrum of what could be considered a lawful protest,” Wetscher said during closing arguments.
“It’s all about group pressure,” said Radcliffe, with Lich and Barber acting as “primary principals” and “metaphorically standing shoulder-to-shoulder with those on the ground, exerting pressure on the residents of downtown Ottawa by virtue of the weight and mass of those trucks, the decibels of those horns… to achieve a public policy end.
“It is the Crown’s position that they went too far.”
In his reply, Greenspon said the temporary interference with the lives of downtown residents “was admitted from the get-go.”
That interference was resolved early on, Greenspon said, with the Feb. 7, 2022 injunction from Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean, which was reaffirmed ten days later on Feb. 16 — the day before Lich and Barber were arrested.
While the court injunction barred truckers from blaring their horns, the court order also specified that protesters were allowed to remain in Ottawa’s downtown to partake in a “peaceful, lawful and safe” demonstration.
“From the Crown’s perspective, freedom of expression and freedom of peaceful assembly — although constitutionally-entrenched and protected as fundamental freedoms — are to take a back seat to the enjoyment of property,” said Greenspon.
“We say: not so.”
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