Sentencing hearing begins for ‘Freedom Convoy’ leaders Lich, Barber

OTTAWA — The sentencing hearing for “Freedom Convoy” leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber is set to begin Wednesday morning, months after the two were found guilty of mischief.

Two days have been set aside for the parties to present their sentencing submissions.

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The Crown is seeking a prison sentence of seven years for Lich and eight years for Barber, who was also convicted of counselling others to disobey a court order.

Lich and Barber were key figures behind the convoy protest that occupied downtown Ottawa for three weeks beginning in late January 2022 to protest vaccine mandates and other pandemic measures.

The protest ended after the federal government invoked the Emergencies Act for the first time ever. The convoy was cleared out of Ottawa’s downtown core in a three-day police operation that began on Feb. 18.

Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey said she found Lich and Barber guilty of mischief because they routinely encouraged people to join or remain at the protest, despite knowing the adverse effects it was having on downtown residents and businesses.

Barber also was found guilty of counselling others to disobey a court order for telling people to ignore a judge’s injunction directing convoy participants to stop honking their truck horns. Lich was not charged with that offence.

In a separate Ottawa-based trial for Pat King, another convoy leader, the Crown sought a sentence of 10 years in prison for mischief and disobeying a court order.

King was sentenced in February to three months of house arrest, 100 hours of community service at a food bank or men’s shelter and a year of probation.

He received nine months credit for time served before his conviction.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre criticized the Crown’s sentencing proposals for Lich and Barber. In a social media post Monday, Poilievre compared the sentencing range to sentences for other crimes and asked, “How is this justice?”

While it’s quite rare for elected officials to comment directly on a sentencing hearing, Poilievre’s message was echoed by several other Conservative MPs.

Deputy Conservative leader Melissa Lantsman called the Crown’s proposed sentence “political vengeance not actual justice.”

Some Conservatives, including Poilievre, were openly supportive of the “Freedom Convoy” as trucks and other vehicles clogged roads around Parliament Hill.

Both Lich and Barber thanked Poilievre for his support in separate social media posts.

“There is a fine line between politics and the judiciary, as there should be, and I have long understood the uncomfortable position elected officials find themselves in when it comes to commenting on cases that are before the court,” Lich said on X Tuesday.

“In our case, the double standard and the vindictive nature from the prosecution office has become too obvious to ignore and will set a precedent going forward that will affect all Canadians who choose to peacefully protest or deter them from exercising their Charter Right to peacefully assemble.”

“Thank you, Pierre, we’ve been waiting so long for elected officials to speak up,” Barber wrote in his own post.

Poilievre lost his Ottawa-area seat in the April election and is running in an Alberta byelection.

Both Lich and Barber were found not guilty on charges of intimidation, counselling to commit intimidation, obstructing police and counselling others to obstruct police.

Justice Perkins-McVey said intimidation carries a sense of menace or violence. She said that both Lich and Barber repeatedly called for protesters to remain peaceful throughout the protest.

As for obstructing police, Perkins-McVey said both were arrested without incident and were in custody before the main police operation began to clear downtown Ottawa.

Charges for counselling others to commit mischief were stayed at the request of the Crown.

Saskatoon defence lawyer calls Crown’s request ‘ridiculous’

Saskatoon defence lawyer Brian Pfefferle wasn’t happy to learn that the Crown is seeking to sentence Lich and Barber to seven and eight years behind bars.

“Crazy, ridiculous, excessive. There’s lots of adjectives I’d give it. Probably no surprise, as defence lawyer I’m not an advocate for putting people into custody that aren’t dangerous. I think it’s outrageous,” Pfefferle said during an interview on the Evan Bray Show on Wednesday.

“You hope that they take into account what custody sentences should consider, and that’s the purpose of jail is punishment, deterrence, sometimes removing people that are dangerous from society, sometimes rehabilitation,” Pfefferle explained. “That’s where I’m having trouble finding the logic behind this.”

The defence lawyer said he struggles to see the reason to jail the two organizers.

“I can’t see one, other than to say that civil disobedience to the point where we can cost the state and citizens significant funds needs to be deterred, from a public perspective, and that’s the reason why you put these individuals into custody,” Pfefferle added.

“I hope that the judge considers the defence arguments here and doesn’t put these individuals in custody, for their sake and for the taxpayers’ sake.”

Pfefferle said he’s not sure why the hearing requires two days, but said there could be a lot of victim impact statements heard by the court.

“Just because of the public interest in this, I would suspect that the prosecution will want to spend a considerable amount of time discussing the effect of this on the citizens,” Pfefferle said.

“There could be quite a considerable number of people that are involved in the victim impact process. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s a significant number of people that are to come forward as victims of it. That would take considerable time, and it is a novel argument that they’re trying to put forward for this amount of custody over something that had this much public notoriety.”

–with files from 650 CKOM