Apologies for Unlawful Arrests & Frozen Accounts?

Tamara's lawyer: 'Perhaps we can apologize to the people whose bank accounts were frozen.'

Click image to watch video

Two days ago, on Friday the 13th, a Freedom Convoy marathon mischief trial came to an end. These frivolous and vexatious charges were laid back in February 2022. It may take months before a court verdict is issued and organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber learn their fate.

Early 2022 is a lifetime ago for a society that doesn’t want to talk about anything COVID, that just wants to carry on. But there’s no moving on when dozens of Convoy trials are still in process. Governments are still prosecuting COVID-era dissent. Violent criminal charges are being withdrawn due to clogged courts yet this lunacy is still consuming resources. Somebody needs to be an adult and put a stop to these trials.

That’s a political decision. Properly made by political leaders. Who need to declare enough is enough.

A few weeks ago, Lawrence Greenspon - Tamara’s lawyer - answered some pertinent questions after court had ended for the day. The questions were posed by independent journalist David Krayden (see his Substack here, and his X account here).

You can watch the video by clicking the image above. The transcript is below:

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David Krayden: [You mentioned] at the beginning of your summation that disruption is a fundamental component of protest.

Lawrence Greenspon: Yes.

DK: And it seemed to me like the Crown kept thinking that if anybody was inconvenienced in all this, that that somehow was unlawful. Is that how you were taking this?

LG: Well, that's the fundamental problem. It was addressed by our Court of Appeal in Tremblay. And like I said from the beginning, in a battle or a contest between freedom of expression and peaceful assembly - both of which are in our Charter of Rights and Freedoms and are constitutionally protected - in a battle between those things and the right to enjoyment of property (which is nowhere to be found in the Constitution) there is no contest. Freedom of expression, freedom of peaceful assembly - which is what this was all about - wins every time.

DK: Do you think the Ottawa Police Services created this crisis? Because you mentioned the fact that they told them to go downtown, to park the cars, they didn't issue any parking violations. Was that a real issue here?

LG: Oh, it's a big issue. It's one of the two things that distinguishes this case from any other of the cases that are before Her Honour. The two things are: Number one, they were told where to go, how to get there, and where to park. And they did that. There's no other case, out of the hundred cases that the judge had before her, where that's been the situation. Where the authorities have told them: Go over there, park there.

That's the one thing. The other thing, of course, is that there's Justice McLean's orders, in which he specifically preserved their right to continue to peacefully assemble. And he did that in the middle of this demonstration. So those two things are not anywhere found in any of the previous case law, and that's why I suspect the judge has indicated right at the end that this is an unprecedented situation.

DK: And my last question, at the very end you suggest that this is like, as Benjamin Franklin said, People who sacrifice liberty for security, and we might end up apologizing if these two are convicted. Is that how you feel about that?

LG: It's a trade-off, unfortunately, that Canadians have been historically [willing to make]. We've been prepared to trade freedoms for security. We've done it over and over and over again. We did it to the Italian Canadians, we did it to the Japanese Canadians, we did it to those who were arrested without any rights in the War Measures Act in 1970. We've done it over and over again. And every time, we wait a generation or two and then we apologize to those people. So my hope is that we won't be apologizing for anything in this circumstance. Perhaps we can apologize to the people whose bank accounts were frozen. Perhaps we can apologize to the people who were arrested under an Emergency Measures Act that should never have been invoked.

DK: Thank you, Mr. Greenspon.