WATCH: Lich and Barber trial a lesson in the “power of propaganda”: Malcolm

Candice Malcolm and the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms' John Carpay discuss prosecutors seeking 7 and 8 year sentences for the Freedom Convoy's Tamara Lich and Chris Barber

WATCH THE FULL INTERVIEW AT BOTTOM

Juno News’ Candice Malcolm hosted the President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms, John Carpay, on her Thursday show to discuss the abnormalities of the Tamara Lich and Chris Barber mischief trial and how Canada has a two-tier judicial system.

Lich and Barber were accused of being organizers of the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest, with both found guilty of one count of mischief for their involvement in the protest.

Barber faces one additional count of counselling others to disobey a court order.

They are scheduled to face sentencing soon in what has become the longest and most expensive mischief trial in Canadian history.

The judge ruled that parts of Section 430 of the Criminal Code were violated during the Freedom Convoy, such as obstructing or interfering with any person in the lawful use, enjoyment or operation of property.

However, that verdict may be appealed.

“It’s debatable,” said Carpay of the ruling. “Some Ottawa residents had interference with the lawful use and enjoyment of their own property because some of the streets were too clogged up; people had trouble driving their cars out of their apartment building parkades.”

One of the Crown prosecutors, Siobhain Wetscher, informed the judge on Wednesday that the government sought to impose a seven-year prison sentence for Lich and an eight-year sentence for Barber.

“People had trouble getting around, so there’s a finding of guilt on the obstruction and encouraging that insofar as Tamara Lich and Chris Barber called on Canadians to come to Ottawa and to protest peacefully,” said Carpay.

Malcolm noted how Canada has more often seen left-wing activists calling for civil disobedience, and while you cannot obstruct property, their demonstrations often do.

“From where I’m standing, we have seen environmental protests that block freeways, that block pipelines, block people from getting to work,” she said. “We saw the same thing after the hoax regarding the unmarked graves, where there were massive protests and the tearing down of statues that are symbolic to our country.”

However, Malcolm argued that because these protests “are for the pet-issues of the far left,” they are responded to differently.

“Here we have a once-in-a-blue-moon, working-class people, not even politically active people. I don’t know if these people identify themselves as Conservatives or not, but just people tired of government overreach when it came to COVID,” she said.

“I think we all universally agree at this point that everybody overreacted a lot during COVID and that a lot of the rules and restrictions were nonsensical and counter to a free society. Your own organization helped prove that the Emergencies Act was government overreach,” she told Carpay.

Carpay said that the biggest problem facing Canadians on this issue is the “unequal application of the law,” citing a 2021 Canada Day protest wherein demonstrators tore down a statue of Queen Victoria that stood on the grounds of the Manitoba legislature in response to residential schools.

The statue was vandalized and removed in front of the police; however, no charges were laid.

“We saw the same very soft approach to people in March 2020,” said Carpay. “We had these people blockading railways in the name of Aboriginal rights and the environment, and prime minister Trudeau said he wanted to sit down and meet with them. So it’s all about the cause.”

Carpay added that if the people at the Freedom Convoy had been waving rainbow or Hamas flags instead of anti-Trudeau flags, the situation would have played out differently.

Additionally, the Public Order Emergencies Commission revealed that Trudeau’s federal cabinet determined that they were going to paint Freedom Convoy protestors as racist, white supremacist, neo-nazi, criminal and violent well in advance of anyone arriving in Ottawa.

“Then it spun around in a vicious circle with the government-funded media,” said Carpay.

Politicians would make the accusations that protestors were dangerous or arsonists, then the media would report on that, and then the politicians would cite those media reports.

“So they just went back and forth in their own little bubble projecting this image, which, unfortunately for some of the Ottawa residents who were listening to government media, were scared,” said Carpay. “They weren’t scared based on the reality of the protestors actually being violent or dangerous, but they were scared by the media coverage that completely misrepresented these Canadians.”

Malcolm said the saga of the Freedom Convoy marked a display of the “power of propaganda.”

“I think that Canadians are some of the most propagandized people in the world,” she said.

Carpay added another “very dark aspect” of the lockdown era is how judges have “written the media narrative into their court rulings,” making assertions from CBC News or elsewhere, despite no evidence from those sources being presented in court.

“Judges took great liberties to write the media narrative into their court rulings, which, prior to 2020, I think would have been very rare. Whether it’s a murder trial, family law dispute or constitutional challenge, Canadian judges would have ignored what the media was saying and focused only on the evidence before the court.”

Lich and Barber are expected to receive sentencing by next week.