Arresting the Peaceful and the Law-Abiding

Chris Barber spent a month in constant communication with the police, only to be arrested and have his bank accounts frozen.

Chris Barber testifying on Nov. 1st; screengrab from video broadcast

Chris Barber’s small trucking company in Swift Current, Saskatchewan specializes in hauling agricultural equipment “across the prairies and into the United States.” This week he told the Emergencies Act hearing he got two COVID vaccinations not for health reasons, but for economic ones.

Vaccinated drivers were in short supply, “freight was backed up [on] both sides of the border,” and the fate of the business he’d spent 16 years building hung in the balance.

Prior to organizing the Freedom Convoy, Chris had expressed himself forcefully on social media, but had never been politically active. He describes the convoy as “completely organic,” an example of “organized chaos.”

Chris Barber’s truck; photo from his Twitter account here

The Western arm of the convoy, with his big red Kenworth truck up front, exceeded his “wildest dreams.” As it made its way across the prairies, trucks would join, but would also depart. It was difficult to gauge the overall size, but at times he believes it was 25 kilometers (16 miles) long. Looking through his windshield, he says he witnessed

overwhelming support; people standing on the side of the highways, people lining overpasses. We were often late by around two hours; we were never really on schedule. And people stood in frigid temperatures, minus 20 to minus 30, just to get a chance to see us come through.

No one who watches the video of his testimony, or reads the official transcript can have any confusion. This is a law-abiding individual acutely concerned about safety, who’d never been in trouble with the law, and who was in daily contact with the police. In his words:

the first police force would have been Medicine Hat [Alberta]. We were in contact with Swift Current, Regina, Moosejaw [Saskatchewan], all the way across the country for — for police escorts. If there was a traffic light, we actually called for traffic control at those intersections so we could proceed through the intersections safely.

Once they arrived in Ottawa, Chris says he spent his days talking to truck drivers and helping to address police concerns:

I lost about 20 pounds in a matter of three weeks with the amount of walking I did working with law enforcement…I had a vehicle here, but it was hard to get around with a vehicle, so a lot of times it was walking.

And it was frigid…I had two t-shirts on, two hoodies on and long underwear and three pairs of socks at times.

In one instance, he says he was able to solve a problem even though the cops had struck out. An 18-wheeler

was parked sideways across the complete intersection. And law enforcement had tried to get him to straighten his truck out for quite some time and failed at it miserably. I remember it was easy. I walked over to the truck. I stepped up on the running board and I said, "Hey, Buddy, you're in the way really bad and you're causing us some grief. Could you just back it up against the curb, please, and you'll save us all a lot of trouble?" And he literally put the truck in gear and backed it up against the — the [Ontario Provincial Police] and the [Ottawa Police Service] officers were amazed it was that easy.

Despite all of the above, Chris was arrested in Ottawa on February 17th, in front of his 18-year-old son. He spent a night in jail. His phone was seized and still hasn’t been returned. His banks accounts - both corporate and personal - were frozen, which meant the truck drivers back home who work for him suddenly had their gas cards declined. One of his bank accounts remained frozen for more than three months.

Welcome to Canada in 2022. This is what happens to people who’ve never been convicted of a crime, who work hard to keep everyone safe, who behave entirely peacefully, and who cooperate fully with the police.