LILLEY: Crown seeks to make Convoy organizers political prisoners

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We don’t do political prisoners in Canada, but it seems Ottawa Crown Attorney Dallas Mack wants that to change. In a sentencing hearing beginning Wednesday, Mack’s office will ask for stiff sentences for Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber. 

Lich and Barber were convicted of mischief by Justice Heather Perkins-McVey in April, and now the Crown is seeking a seven-year sentence for Lich and an eight-year term for Barber. 

Mack isn’t leading this case, but a sentencing recommendation of that sort doesn’t happen without the full consent of the Crown Attorney. 

After more than three years of court-imposed conditions, some time behind bars and a prosecution that turned entirely political, any jail time would be too much. It shouldn’t matter your view of the Freedom Convoy and the three weeks that shook Ottawa; in Canada, we don’t jail people we disagree with politically. 

At least, that isn’t part of our tradition, but in this increasingly polarized world, so-called “progressives” seem to want to use every lever of the state to punish those they disagree with. 

That’s how we got to this point in the first place. 

The Convoy was sparked by the Trudeau government’s decision to mandate vaccines, including for cross-border truckers, who had been doing their jobs even at the height of the pandemic without issue. In the summer of 2021, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had spoken about bodily autonomy and how Canada wasn’t a country that forced people to take medical treatments they didn’t want. He encouraged vaccination against COVID-19, but he said his government would not make it mandatory. 

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Then he saw the polling data, made vaccines mandatory for federal workers, for travel by plane, rail or boat in federal jurisdictions, and called an election on the issue he had previously spoken against. 

A few months later, the mandate for truckers came into effect, and the trucks rolled on Ottawa. 

That the Convoy was able to set up on Parliament Hill and occupy Wellington St. for three weeks before the Emergencies Act was invoked is all about local incompetence. It was a complete failure by city and police officials used to dealing with large, in fact much larger protests than the Convoy. 

Police should have moved the rigs off Wellington St. after the first night and told the protesters to come back the next day. Protesting doesn’t give you the right to block or live on a city street indefinitely. 

Those in charge never did that, and we saw the end result. 

Police Chief Peter Sloly resigned in the face of harsh criticism from the Ottawa Police Services Board, which was also incompetent, but no other senior officers faced any consequences for their lack of action. Mayor Jim Watson saw his political career sputter to an end over this and other issues, but no other senior city staff responsible for this disaster faced consequences. 

Now, Lich and Barber are being asked by the Crown to be scapegoated, sent off to prisons for a long time over the charge of mischief. 

Lich has already spent 49 days in jail over this mischief charge. She and Barber have endured a 45-day trial that has cost taxpayers untold millions and now, the Crown wants more blood.  

In no scenario should sentences of seven and eight years be handed down; they shouldn’t even be recommended by the Crown. The fact that these recommendations have come forward shows the full politicization of this case and brings the system of justice into disrepute. 

Even those who still loathe the Freedom Convoy should be able to see and understand that a single conviction of mischief shouldn’t result in a sentence longer than some murderers get. 

Let’s hope that Justice Heather Perkins-McVey has more wisdom than Crown Attorney Dallas Mack.