Juno News - Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are on trial

00:00:00.000 Transcription by CastingWords

00:00:30.000 Thank you.

00:01:00.000 Welcome to Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:17.040 This is the Andrew Lawton Show, brought to you by True North.

00:01:25.160 Hello and welcome to you all, Canada's Most Irreverent Talk Show.

00:01:29.280 So here, the Andrew Lawton Show on True North on this Tuesday, September 5th, just after 4 o'clock Eastern Time, where I am in Ontario,

00:01:38.160 and also where Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, the organizers of the infamous Freedom Convoy, which arrived in Ottawa nearly 20 months ago, are standing trial.

00:01:50.340 Now, this has been a long time coming in some ways, and I don't take any delight in the fact that Tamara and Chris are on trial,

00:01:58.840 although I am going to put forward the belief that if they are going to be swifter, justice is better than nothing at all.

00:02:06.160 And they've actually been denied the right to a speedy trial by virtue of how long this has taken,

00:02:11.200 when especially in Tamara's case, her life has been put on hold in very real ways by the conditions placed upon her by various judges.

00:02:20.340 Now, these have eased somewhat in recent months.

00:02:24.540 You may recall there was a time in which she was not able to speak at all, and since then she's published a book and she's sat down with me for an interview.

00:02:33.200 Actually, she's been on my show once, once in response to the Public Order Emergency Commission report and another when her book came out.

00:02:40.320 We'll play a clip of that in just a little bit of time here.

00:02:43.680 For Chris, he's been able to carry on with his life to some extent, but still both of them have had hanging over them for basically 19 months since the end of the convoy.

00:02:54.540 this possibility that they will be thrown in jail.

00:02:58.440 They are facing a number of charges,

00:03:00.080 the bulk of which pertain to so-called mischief.

00:03:03.580 Mischief.

00:03:04.260 That's what they're doing.

00:03:05.300 They're mischief makers.

00:03:06.360 You know that little thing that you're accused of doing

00:03:08.220 when you're a toddler by your parents committing mischief?

00:03:11.100 That is what these people are on trial for.

00:03:13.860 Now, I'm not in Ottawa right now.

00:03:16.220 I'm not in the courtroom,

00:03:17.440 but I've been following along from some of the folks who are

00:03:19.980 with what's happened there.

00:03:21.020 And it sounds as though there hasn't yet been any criminality that's been advanced by the Crown, by witnesses for the prosecution.

00:03:28.920 They even played a whole bunch of video clips from the convoy.

00:03:31.960 One of them involved protesters shouting love over fear.

00:03:35.320 Now, this was a prosecution piece of evidence.

00:03:38.760 This was a piece of evidence that the Crown thought would really help establish the criminality of Tamara Leach and Chris Barber,

00:03:45.060 which was a group of protesters in Ottawa with the Freedom Convoy shouting love over fear.

00:03:51.020 Oh, yes, that is as criminal as it gets in Justin Trudeau's Canada.

00:03:56.120 This is going to be a long trial.

00:03:58.200 It's scheduled for 16 days of sitting, but it's not actually 16 days straight

00:04:03.120 because they're starting and stopping at a couple of points.

00:04:05.840 So this is going to go into October unless they may have made a change,

00:04:10.140 of which I'm not aware, although the dates that I have are going to go into October

00:04:14.720 and at the end of which it may be a considerable time beyond that

00:04:17.960 before we really fully understand the scope of what's happened here.

00:04:21.840 But we can take a bigger picture look at what the last 20 months have shown us,

00:04:26.540 which is that the Freedom Convoy won.

00:04:29.020 The Freedom Convoy was preaching a message that was, in fact, a unifying one.

00:04:33.600 And even if there were people in Ottawa that didn't want to hear what they had to say

00:04:37.420 and people that may have understandably not liked the sounds of honking horns,

00:04:42.280 which were persistent for the first few days of the convoy anyway,

00:04:46.340 it was a message that they were sharing that Canadians desperately needed to hear.

00:04:51.840 It was a message that provincial premiers needed to hear, notably Doug Ford in Ontario,

00:04:56.480 Jason Kenney in Alberta, Scott Moe in Saskatchewan,

00:04:59.100 and a bunch of even non-conservative governments in BC.

00:05:04.000 And perhaps you could also include in the mix there Quebec.

00:05:07.320 I don't know if you call Quebec's government a conservative one, certainly not in form.

00:05:12.240 But we also have to look at the implications of the convoy on Canadian politics.

00:05:18.100 This was the movement that, while there were other things going on, was really what led to the ouster of Aaron O'Toole, the ushering in of Pierre Polyev, a guy who I know people can make any number of criticisms about how he and the Conservatives handled the COVID era.

00:05:33.840 But Polyev himself was, at least in those early days, a very clear supporter of the convoy's aims.

00:05:40.580 Now, since then, he's equivocated a little bit on the specifics, like, for example, when he told me in an interview that he thought it would have been better if they didn't bring trucks, to which I'd say, well, then you wouldn't have had a Freedom Convoy.

00:05:53.020 But here we have the state trying to lay at Tamara Leach's and Chris Barber's feet the humiliation and shame that the state endured because of the Freedom Convoy, the humiliation and shame that Justin Trudeau endured because of the Freedom Convoy.

00:06:08.720 These were the people that held a mirror up to the status and authoritarians, the people who held the mirror up to those who gave into fear and those who exacted control over every single person in this country, down to what you put on your face, to how you run your business, to if you can run your business, and yes, to what you put in your body.

00:06:28.540 That was what the Freedom Convoy did.

00:06:30.900 And what was interesting is that this protest, which began in a fight against mandates, a

00:06:36.060 fight against vaccine mandates and vaccine passports, morphed into something far greater.

00:06:42.180 As I remarked in a column at the end of the Freedom Convoy's time in Ottawa, and I have

00:06:46.920 quoted myself, nothing more insufferable than someone who quotes themselves, but I get like

00:06:50.840 one good line a year.

00:06:51.980 So I like to milk it for a little bit.

00:06:53.640 The quote that I am going to remind you of is when I said that the Freedom Convoy showed the lengths through which those who hate freedom will go to stop it.

00:07:04.100 And the Freedom Convoy's great victory, I don't think, was it vanquishing COVID mandates, because let's be real, it didn't.

00:07:10.500 Many of the COVID mandates, in fact, most of them in Canada, outlasted the Freedom Convoy.

00:07:15.660 Now, whether the convoy set a precedent by which any other statist would be very careful

00:07:20.720 and very cautious about putting these mandates forward in the future, I think, is a completely

00:07:25.180 fair discussion to have.

00:07:27.460 But what the Freedom Convoy did is reveal, reveal in a very legitimate way.

00:07:34.760 Well, illegitimate, but I mean legitimate in the sense of it was useful.

00:07:38.220 It revealed in a very useful way exactly what people like Justin Trudeau and Christopher

00:07:43.200 Freeland will do when they feel their narrative is threatened. I'm talking, of course, about

00:07:48.420 the Emergencies Act, which moved the discussion about the Freedom Convoy into entirely different

00:07:53.940 territory. Remember, when the Emergencies Act came into play, even people who didn't like the

00:07:58.840 protest started to say, OK, well, hang on. No, I didn't want to go that far with it. But right now,

00:08:03.960 the government has claimed exoneration on the Emergencies Act because they were exonerated in

00:08:09.820 some way by the commission, the Public Order Emergency Commission. Well, many of those who

00:08:15.200 have been charged with COVID offenses have had their charges quietly dropped. The prosecution

00:08:20.220 against Tamara and Chris has persisted and is continuing now, has just started this morning

00:08:26.200 in Ottawa. And while there are going to be a number of challenges still yet to come, and we'll talk

00:08:31.300 about some of those this week. Challenges against the Emergencies Act that will go through various

00:08:36.240 levels of court, continued appeals of other charges, generally speaking, the courts have

00:08:41.180 sided with the government on pretty much every substantive COVID challenge that's been put

00:08:46.940 before them. Even when there has been a clear and undeniable breach of the Constitution,

00:08:51.940 the measures that the governments have imposed have been saved by Section 1 of the Charter,

00:08:56.400 which is to say the court has found that, yeah, you may have breached people's rights,

00:08:59.940 but you were reasonable in doing so to crudely paraphrase section one of the Canadian Charter

00:09:06.900 of Rights and Freedoms, a document which is tremendously powerful, but only when you have

00:09:11.360 institutions that decide to be bound and governed by it. So I'm keeping an eye on what's happening

00:09:17.720 in Ottawa right now as being one of the last real stands that the Freedom Convoy is able to make in

00:09:23.720 court. Criminal law is a very, very high bar. There's a very high bar to be found guilty of

00:09:29.760 having committed a crime. It's not just the balance of probabilities. There's no section one

00:09:34.420 that we can see invoked here. It is about, did these people do what the government said they did

00:09:40.500 and were those actions criminal? I want to welcome into the show here, John Carpe,

00:09:44.940 who is the president of the Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms. Now the JCCF

00:09:49.740 is representing Chris Barber, one of the co-defendants. And I should also say, by way of

00:09:55.060 disclosure, I sit on the board of the JCCF, although that has no bearing in this interview

00:09:59.760 I'm doing today. John, it's good to talk to you. Thanks for coming on today.

00:10:04.020 Glad to be with you, Andrew.

00:10:05.480 So let's start off by talking about this in the broader context there. I tried to lay it out as

00:10:11.660 best as I could. This is really the big criminal case that we will see coming out of the COVID era

00:10:17.680 and more specifically out of the convoy here.

00:10:20.460 And when you look at the charges,

00:10:21.800 it's really not clear to me as a non-lawyer

00:10:24.700 and perhaps it's clearer to you as a lawyer

00:10:26.780 what the criminality of this is.

00:10:30.080 Well, this is something that, you know,

00:10:31.820 we can get caught up in all the excitement and intrigue

00:10:34.600 and what is the opening statement

00:10:36.880 of the Crown prosecutor and the Crown's position.

00:10:40.400 And of course, it's fascinating and thrilling and interesting,

00:10:43.280 but we must not lose sight of the fact

00:10:44.800 that this is outrageous that any criminal charges were brought in the first place.

00:10:50.780 The federal government, Ontario government, the city of Ottawa,

00:10:54.900 municipal government had ample law enforcement options,

00:10:59.260 which they did not use.

00:11:02.220 And we probably don't have time to get into all of them,

00:11:05.460 but just a few examples, parking tickets,

00:11:08.460 toying trucks that were illegally parked,

00:11:10.300 issuing fines and tickets for for municipal offenses for having a an assembly without a

00:11:20.000 permit there's all kinds of law enforcement and the national emergency support is supposed to

00:11:26.020 exist under the legislation only if other law enforcement mechanisms are not able to

00:11:33.740 deal with the situation what we had a year and seven months ago was a peaceful protest that was

00:11:40.020 certainly causing inconvenience to people living in uh in downtown ottawa and but the regular law

00:11:47.700 enforcement was not used not applied uh the local police uh and you would know more about this you

00:11:52.980 wrote a book on it andrew but the local police uh at a local level were in harmony with you know

00:11:59.380 dialogue conversations communications with protesters police were telling them where to

00:12:04.260 park their trucks anyway the point is this it's outrageous that criminal charges were brought

00:12:09.460 against Canadians for doing nothing other than peacefully exercising their charter freedoms of

00:12:15.300 expression, association, and peaceful assembly. One thing that I find interesting on that note

00:12:21.400 is that Tamara and Chris, whatever people think of the charges that they had laid against them,

00:12:26.320 they were not even charged under the Emergency SAC. They weren't even charged under that

00:12:30.600 authority. They were charged under the Criminal Code of Canada, which I think supports your point

00:12:34.880 that there was an existing authority

00:12:37.020 available to law enforcement

00:12:38.380 when these charges were applied.

00:12:41.240 Yeah, and then when you look at the heart of it,

00:12:44.240 well, you look at the mischief charges.

00:12:45.920 Mischief in the criminal code, section 430,

00:12:49.160 there's four different heads of it.

00:12:52.120 One of them is to vandalize or damage property.

00:12:55.040 That's one form of mischief.

00:12:56.180 Another one is to interfere with the lawful use

00:13:01.840 and enjoyment of property.

00:13:03.900 And on that note, I suppose that if you park your vehicle illegally, it's still quite a stretch to say that you're lawfully interfering with the use and enjoyment of property.

00:13:21.680 So to have moved that on to a level of a criminal accusation is just reprehensible.

00:13:28.040 it's also reprehensible that Tamara Leach spent a total of 49 days in jail in respect of a criminal

00:13:34.580 charge that if she is convicted which she should not be she's entirely innocent but if she is

00:13:39.860 convicted she's not going to be spending any time in jail after conviction yet she spent 49 days in

00:13:46.160 jail yeah and I look at that and I see just a I mean the weirdest thing about that is that Tamara

00:13:54.280 Leach of the two and I'm not saying that what she went through Chris should have gone through

00:13:57.860 But of the two, she didn't even have a truck. So I mean, her right to protest is as defensible as

00:14:04.320 it gets, because all of the disruptions that the critics of the convoy brought up had to do with

00:14:09.360 vehicles, whereas she rode up there, rode shotgun with Chris Barber on the way there. Now, again,

00:14:14.420 I'm not saying that the charges against Chris are any more reasonable, but it's strange that

00:14:19.740 she has become the focal point of the state's ire. And I think, you know, ultimately, if I'm

00:14:24.540 to try to understand why that is it was because she was the focal point as being the inspirational

00:14:29.460 force of the convoy so uh she is the the head of the snake to the government if you will and they

00:14:34.340 think that they can make an example of her it seems but that i mean that may be fine if you're

00:14:39.020 trying to craft a plot or a narrative but that's not the way the law works well what's also

00:14:44.040 disconcerting is the blatant double standard uh when we had aboriginal uh protesters i don't know

00:14:50.220 they're aboriginals or environmentalists or both but this was in march of 2020 and they were

00:14:55.500 blockading railway lines it was costing millions of dollars in damage and the prime minister's

00:15:02.060 public statement was that he would like to sit down and meet with them and there are no criminal

00:15:06.620 charges and there could have been uh based on the fact that that there was a definitely a

00:15:13.020 interference in the lawful use lawful enjoyment of property when you get into a physical blockade

00:15:19.580 and you blockade uh you stop trains from moving goods and you have perishable goods that are

00:15:24.540 rotting you're causing millions of dollars of damage arguably that could have been a

00:15:28.700 time for criminal charges and yet the prime minister says oh he wants to sit down and

00:15:32.700 meet with these people um it's the same double standard we saw with with covid if you were

00:15:38.700 uh you might remember uh queens park doug ford denounced anti-lockdown protesters as a bunch of

00:15:45.020 reckless idiots who are endangering everybody's lives no you got to quote him directly john a

00:15:49.580 bunch of yahoos that was the line a bunch of yahoos and then and then not long thereafter

00:15:55.740 when people are marching in the streets uh against uh racism all of a sudden uh trudeau and ford and

00:16:04.220 the chief medical officers nobody will denounce a protest against racism which almost makes you

00:16:09.180 you think, is COVID a political virus that knows that if it's a good cause, it's not going to

00:16:15.300 spread amongst people. But if it's a really bad cause, like protesting against lockdowns,

00:16:19.200 it's going to spread. So this is really disconcerting that you have Chris Barber,

00:16:23.860 Tamara Leach, and many, many other Canadians as well. These happen to be the most famous,

00:16:29.480 who are criminally charged. When you have another example, the Crown prosecutors in Manitoba

00:16:36.200 ignored the destruction of a statue of Queen Victoria, which was torn down July 2021.

00:16:45.100 It's a good thing nobody got hurt. The thing weighs a ton or more. And they topple this statue,

00:16:51.980 destroy a statue in full public view with police watching. That is criminal activity. No charges

00:16:57.180 laid. We've seen in the last few months in particular, I mean, long after COVID and the

00:17:03.940 convoy, we've seen a huge number of stories across the country of, in many cases, violent offenders

00:17:10.660 that have been released on bail, are rearrested, are released again. We've seen a lot more of a

00:17:16.200 discussion in the political context about this. I know Conservative leader Pierre Polyev has been

00:17:20.340 talking about it. I know a lot of provincial governments have. And it really brings around

00:17:24.520 the point. I mean, you mentioned how long Tamara spent behind bars. Chris was a little bit more

00:17:28.660 fortunate with his bail conditions. But even so, there have been violent offenders that have had

00:17:34.040 an easier time staying out of jail than Tamara Leach has. Which makes us a banana republic with

00:17:40.560 polar bears. You know, we used to look down our noses at countries where if you criticize the

00:17:47.020 president or the prime minister, the next day you would suddenly find yourself charged with

00:17:51.640 fraud or rape or murder or embezzlement or theft, and you'd be in prison. And of course,

00:17:59.060 everybody knows, well, it's because you criticize the prime minister that you're now suddenly facing

00:18:03.840 these trumped up criminal charges. And this is what we've descended to in Canada, where

00:18:08.340 the blatant, willful criminal activity of destroying a statue of Queen Victoria

00:18:13.820 in Winnipeg in July of 2021, condoned by the police, condoned by the Crown. You've got criminal

00:18:22.640 conduct by people protesting for the environment and or Aboriginal rights. And there's just that

00:18:29.280 double standard. But if you speak out against the Prime Minister and the lockdown measures,

00:18:34.180 you can expect to be criminally charged. It is so nakedly political. And it's very sad that

00:18:41.960 our country has descended to this point. I know you're not litigating in this particular case,

00:18:48.700 but are you able to offer any bit of a roadmap for the audience, John, as to the process here?

00:18:53.660 It's a 16-day trial. I've been following bits and pieces on Twitter today, and I see they're

00:18:58.260 talking about evidence, and both sides are entering a bit. But what's the roadmap this

00:19:03.500 is going to follow here? So after the trial is over, in about 99.9% of cases, the judge

00:19:11.680 will reserve judgment. So the judgment will be forthcoming in what I would predict would be

00:19:17.320 months, not weeks. If it's a short, simple trial, you know, somebody's accused of shoplifting and

00:19:21.960 whatever, right? You might get a judgment in a few days or a week or two. I would not be surprised

00:19:28.800 if it took three, four, five, six months for the judge to sift through all the evidence and write

00:19:36.060 judgment so we're going to get a conviction or an acquittal in in several months time and

00:19:43.900 the justice center's involvement is this in this is that we are providing for the

00:19:49.980 criminal defense for for chris barber and we're also defending tamara leach in a civil action

00:19:57.500 that has been launched by um ottawa residents actually lee who's suing for 300 million dollars

00:20:04.220 over losing some sleep due to horn honking at night.

00:20:09.800 Well, well described, sir.

00:20:12.520 Let me, I mean, you mentioned the shoplifting case

00:20:14.760 and let me like bring the shoplifting example

00:20:17.940 because this is a very simple crime

00:20:19.720 that people can understand,

00:20:21.500 which is, you know, a guy is charged

00:20:22.840 for going into a store,

00:20:24.360 putting a chocolate bar in his pocket and walking out.

00:20:27.120 And when you are charged with that,

00:20:28.320 you basically have, as I understand it,

00:20:30.380 three real defenses.

00:20:31.360 You can say, well, actually, no, that wasn't me.

00:20:33.440 that was someone else entirely that did that. You can say that was me, but I never actually put the

00:20:37.620 chocolate bar in my pocket. I walked in with a chocolate bar, I looked at it, and I put it back

00:20:41.300 in and left. And then you get into, you know, I was not, you know, particularly mentally sound at

00:20:46.700 the time, and I'm not criminally responsible. But, you know, pretty clear, easily understood

00:20:51.360 defenses there. Either someone else did it, or no, that was me, but I didn't really do it. In this

00:20:56.420 case, it's something far more complex. There is no, you know, surveillance footage of the chocolate

00:21:00.740 bar going into a pocket that we can really hinge on here. So what is the defense? Is the defense

00:21:05.640 that, you know, yes, I did all the things you're saying I did, but they aren't criminal?

00:21:12.020 Well, to answer it in a roundabout way, what the Crown needs to prove is the mens rea,

00:21:18.480 which is the guilty mind and the actus reus. So they have to establish, let's pick Chris

00:21:24.020 Barber as, as one of the two examples, they have to establish that Chris Barber, um, interfered

00:21:30.340 with the lawful use and enjoyment of property, uh, as set out in section 430, if it's an

00:21:37.680 obstruction charge, uh, that he actually interfered with the police carrying on their duties.

00:21:44.440 So they have to, uh, prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Chris Barber did the criminal act.

00:21:51.160 that depends on how does the wording of the criminal code match up with the reality? Did

00:21:55.520 he actually do that? If he parked his truck illegally, I don't know if he did or not.

00:22:02.520 In my view, if he did, he should have just gotten a parking ticket. But was the illegal

00:22:08.980 parking of the truck if it was illegally parked? Does that constitute criminal conduct? And then

00:22:14.820 the second, the mens rea, the mental component to be found guilty is that you intended to

00:22:22.040 lawfully interfere with the lawful use and enjoyment of property. There has to be an

00:22:30.060 intention there in your mind to commit the crime. Both of those have to be proved beyond a reasonable

00:22:36.560 doubt and so uh to me it seems the crown has an uphill fight uh if if the judge is is unbiased

00:22:45.600 and fair-minded and does not want to engage in you know virtue signaling towards the the

00:22:50.800 the political establishment um every reason to assume that that this judge is is fair-minded

00:22:56.880 and independent i think the crown has uh an uphill fight is there a constitutional protection for i

00:23:04.240 I guess what people on the left often call civil disobedience,

00:23:07.820 where is there a constitutional protection for,

00:23:09.840 yes, maybe this wasn't exactly following the letter of the law,

00:23:13.520 but I was doing it because it was a form of political expression,

00:23:16.840 which is protected under the Constitution, at least in theory.

00:23:20.560 Short answer is no.

00:23:21.600 The way that civil disobedience is supposed to function in theory

00:23:25.060 is that people are willing to break a law,

00:23:29.400 which they sincerely believe to be unjust,

00:23:31.660 and thereafter they're willing to accept the consequences uh give you sort of an easy example

00:23:37.480 that a lot of people could relate to uh you've got bubble zone legislation around abortion clinics

00:23:42.760 that in most provinces to my knowledge it's illegal uh as a provincial offense not criminal

00:23:49.660 but it's it's illegal to protest within whatever 10 feet or 100 feet of an abortion clinic even if

00:23:57.100 the protest is entirely peaceful. And so it's illegal. Now, civil disobedience would mean that

00:24:02.340 somebody says, I know that I'm committing an offense against a provincial law. I'm going to

00:24:09.060 do it anyway. I'm going to get arrested. I'm going to be found guilty. And I'm going to suffer the

00:24:12.780 consequences of a fine or jail time as a part of a deliberate effort to expose how unjust this law

00:24:19.640 is. So that's civil disobedience in a nutshell. It's deliberate disobedience with a willingness

00:24:26.300 to accept the consequences for the purpose of exposing the unjust law, but it is not a loophole

00:24:32.320 in the criminal process. So the criminal process is still the same. Did you do it? Did you intend

00:24:37.880 to do it? And why you did it, you know, if it was because of sincere, deeply held, profound

00:24:45.080 convictions, that's neither here nor there. But again, I'm curious, and I'm glad you answered

00:24:50.880 that question. I also want to distinguish that from what we're talking about here, because in

00:24:54.860 this case we do have a real disagreement between the crown and the defense as whether a law was

00:25:00.460 even broken well the you know speaking of civil disobedience another example of disobedience

00:25:06.820 would be for truckers to illegally park their trucks with the knowledge that they're going to

00:25:10.780 get ticket after ticket after ticket because if you don't move it after an hour or two i think

00:25:14.840 the municipal authorities are entitled to come back and give you another ticket again right they're

00:25:18.960 not limited to one a day and so the civil disobedience that i think that the truckers

00:25:23.300 were willing to engage in just if i can jump in on there too and i would say beyond that to tow it

00:25:27.620 but the reason the cities didn't tow the trucks was because of their own uh bureaucratic incompetence

00:25:32.060 because they couldn't find tow truck drivers willing to do it so uh that's again they had that

00:25:36.620 tool available to them the other component at least for some of the trucks is that the police

00:25:41.400 told the truckers where to park their trucks yeah and so some trucks were illegally parked but it

00:25:47.400 was with the knowledge and consent of the police which then throws into whole throws into question

00:25:52.060 completely how illegal was it when you've got police giving you a green light on it.

00:25:59.500 Yeah, very, very well said. I mean, obviously, we're going to follow this along here. I saw one

00:26:04.620 report from within the courtroom today that Tamara has been restricted from being unaccompanied in

00:26:10.700 downtown Ottawa. She had to get judicial permission to go and get, I said a sandwich on Twitter,

00:26:19.800 I don't know if she got a sandwich or a bowl of soup or a wrap or a pina colada.

00:26:24.100 I don't know what it was.

00:26:24.860 But she had to get judicial permission to go and get lunch in downtown Ottawa without her lawyer.

00:26:30.120 Now, I don't know if any of this is standard practice in criminal proceedings.

00:26:34.500 I mean, the big challenge that I see here is that it's very difficult.

00:26:38.520 And I'm not making a swipe at the judge herself.

00:26:41.140 I don't know the judge, and I have no reason to suspect she's biased.

00:26:44.480 But this is really at stake in the Freedom Convoy cases.

00:26:49.800 are these dueling narratives of the downtown Ottawa resident experience versus everyone else

00:26:56.440 in the country's experience, I'd say. And it's very difficult to separate a judge who lives in

00:27:02.000 Ottawa from an Ottawa resident. And this was a challenge in one of Tamara's bail hearings,

00:27:07.180 where you had a judge who, as she was throwing Tamara in the slammer, referred to our city.

00:27:12.440 this is the this is what makes the job of a judge very difficult and very demanding because a judge

00:27:20.120 is expected to uh to rise above it uh you take for example uh let's say that somebody in

00:27:27.520 saskatchewan is is accused of of murder and is going to be tried in saskatchewan even if the

00:27:32.560 judge doesn't live in the same city where the alleged crime took place there's going to be

00:27:36.920 media coverage. And so judges are expected as a job requirement to separate themselves as much as

00:27:44.160 possible to disregard the media coverage and to look only at the facts that are placed before the

00:27:52.780 court. Now, I think in a murder trial, that might be a little bit easier because you can just

00:27:57.680 disregard the media coverage. The judge can disregard media coverage as advisable in many

00:28:02.980 It's advisable. In Ottawa, it could be for this particular trial, it could be more difficult if

00:28:09.020 the judge was personally inconvenienced because she couldn't make it to a medical appointment on

00:28:14.820 a given day because there were a lot of trucks parked illegally in downtown Ottawa. If that was

00:28:20.680 the case, again, entirely hypothetical, she would have to detach from that and just kind of say,

00:28:25.740 okay, well, I'm going to put that on the back burner that I was late for an appointment because

00:28:28.760 of the truckers and just focus exclusively on the evidence that is presented before her in the

00:28:34.980 courtroom. It's a very difficult job and I wish her well as she evaluates the evidence. All right.

00:28:42.180 Well, we will definitely keep an eye on this. John Carbet, president of the Justice Center for

00:28:46.900 Constitutional Freedom. It's always a pleasure, John. Thanks for coming on. Thank you, Andrew.

00:28:50.300 Have a great rest of the day. All right. Thank you. And again, I'm not holding back from people

00:28:54.140 the details of the case.

00:28:56.260 Right now, there hasn't actually been

00:28:57.800 too, too much in the way of detail,

00:28:59.800 but we are going to follow this along.

00:29:02.520 And I'll point out,

00:29:03.520 there was one tweet I saw earlier.

00:29:05.200 I want to bring this up again,

00:29:06.440 if I can find it.

00:29:08.160 This was a tweet from Robert Kraychik,

00:29:11.220 who is with Rebel News,

00:29:12.860 and he's there in Ottawa.

00:29:14.520 And oh, we even have the tweet.

00:29:15.880 Okay, great.

00:29:16.540 I just flagged it for my own reference,

00:29:18.420 but good on you, Sean.

00:29:20.180 Tamara Leach's defense attorneys

00:29:21.840 both object to the Crown's derisive description of the Freedom Convoy as an occupation of downtown

00:29:28.480 Ottawa. And Lawrence Greenspun, who is the criminal defense lawyer working with Tamara Leach, he

00:29:34.500 actually just spoke with reporters outside the courthouse a little while ago. I saw a clip of

00:29:40.660 that on Twitter, which that one I didn't tell Sean about. So if he doesn't have the clip, that one's

00:29:44.220 not on him. That's on me. But he was asked and he said, look, we've got, you know, Russia occupying

00:29:48.680 Ukraine right now, let's not, you know, diminish the word of the word occupation to this protest

00:29:54.140 in Ottawa. But I wanted to bring this up, because it shows how language matters. Because if you had

00:30:01.040 a judge that were to say, just nonchalantly, oh, yes, the, you know, the occupation in Ottawa,

00:30:05.920 well, that's going to impart a little bit of bias there. So the crown is trying to use that word

00:30:11.100 defense is saying, no, no, no, you're not going to get away with using that word. Now, in the end,

00:30:14.640 both sides are going to describe this protest the way they want to.

00:30:18.480 What I can say is that I would be very, very, very nervous

00:30:21.980 if I were Tamara Leach's attorney or Chris Barber's attorney,

00:30:25.940 which would be really bad for them because I'm not an attorney.

00:30:28.580 But if I were to be the attorney for either of them,

00:30:31.300 I would not want a jury trial on this, just given the pool from which,

00:30:34.820 I mean, it would be like nine civil servants or something like that.

00:30:38.100 But in any case, not nine, no, 12.

00:30:40.420 Why am I shrinking the size of a jury?

00:30:42.260 It'll be 10 civil servants and two non-civil servants or something.

00:30:45.660 I had to get to 12.

00:30:46.240 I was thinking of the Supreme Court, so my numbers were all wrong there.

00:30:50.080 Actually, it's six for civil, if I'm not mistaken, but 12 for criminal.

00:30:54.020 So Sean's saying 12 angry men.

00:30:56.740 That's the way he remembers.

00:30:58.460 Yeah, but if you got 12 angry men on the jury, it's probably good for the crown.

00:31:02.120 We are going to talk about this more tomorrow with Eva Chipiak, another lawyer.

00:31:06.400 We also have on Friday a full-length interview with Tom Marazzo,

00:31:10.120 a repeat guest on this show

00:31:12.400 and also a gentleman who is writing

00:31:14.460 or has written a book

00:31:15.520 which is coming out tomorrow about the convoy

00:31:18.100 but before we wrap things up today

00:31:20.220 it is back to school time

00:31:21.900 I do not have children

00:31:22.940 and it's been a great many years

00:31:24.100 since I have gone back to school

00:31:25.500 but all of my friends with kids

00:31:27.520 have been sharing their photographs

00:31:29.180 of their kids going to like

00:31:31.220 grade one and two and nine

00:31:33.140 and 14 in one person's case

00:31:35.320 but that was a special case

00:31:36.520 but we also have a little bit

00:31:39.640 of an odd dilemma in that we can talk about all the weird things that happen in schools. But for

00:31:46.060 the most part, I think kids, when they go into school, probably have a pretty narrow set of

00:31:50.300 interests. They're thinking, OK, I don't want to be back in school. I'd rather be away for the

00:31:55.940 summer again. OK, I'll get to see my friends. And, you know, maybe there's a teacher I like or a

00:32:00.560 particular class I like. I don't buy into Global News's version of things, though. Global ran this

00:32:07.140 story that purportedly says Canadian students are kicking off the new school year with climate change

00:32:14.240 and AI top of mind. Climate change and AI top of mind. Now, I found this to be odd. Now, it's not

00:32:22.900 a global article. It's a Canadian press article. So I'll share my scorn for CP. But I was thinking

00:32:27.860 of this and then I was reading the article and I was expecting, okay, maybe they found like, you

00:32:31.220 know, three or four woke students that are saying, wow, you know, I really hope I learn more about

00:32:34.960 climate change. So do we have the text of the article, Sean? We do. See, Sean, you're getting

00:32:40.360 your bonus today. The article actually says nothing to support what the article is about.

00:32:47.840 It says, many students are likely feeling a mixture of nerves and excitement as they begin

00:32:52.980 another school year. And then there's a paragraph that says, with disruptive pandemic measures

00:32:57.760 seemingly behind them, parents and educators say a new crop of issues may affect classroom learning

00:33:02.740 this year, including AI technology, affordability, and climate change. Then there's a paragraph about

00:33:07.940 wildfires. Then there's a paragraph about BC saying no schools were damaged by wildfires,

00:33:13.300 but students will still be affected. And then there are a few more paragraphs about like nothing

00:33:18.340 to do with anything. So nowhere in this story do they quote a parent, a teacher, a student,

00:33:24.520 a study, an expert, or anything that suggests there is at all any, any support for the fact

00:33:32.800 that students are somehow paranoid or nervous or top of mind for them is climate change or AI.

00:33:40.680 So it's a great example of the media just literally manufacturing a story that has no

00:33:45.500 bearing in reality. But that is not all. Global News has been going for the big award this week.

00:33:51.240 I don't know what the award is. We'll have to come up with an award. Maybe we'll bring back

00:33:54.280 Fake News Friday or something. But there was another one here that was talking about New

00:33:59.080 Brunswick parents worrying of bullying at school because of changes to the gender identity policy.

00:34:05.960 Now, this is the New Brunswick policy that basically says if you are under 16 and you

00:34:10.740 want to change your gender at school, a parent needs to consent to it. This is a very popular

00:34:15.380 story, a very popular policy. Parents around the country agree with it. It really is quite modest.

00:34:21.180 It doesn't out trans students to their parents at all.

00:34:23.900 It just says they need to provide parental consent.

00:34:27.060 And if they're not comfortable talking to their parents,

00:34:28.880 the school will let someone help them out with that.

00:34:31.780 But you read the article and it is two parents that are in it.

00:34:36.340 And they don't even quote the parents, by the way.

00:34:38.720 Sean and Amanda Rouse, parents of a transgender teen in,

00:34:42.720 I'm not even, I'm going to try to say it.

00:34:45.300 If you're in New Brunswick, please let me know how wrong I've gotten it.

00:34:48.480 Quis Pamsis, Kipemzi, I don't actually have any idea.

00:34:52.500 So we'll say Q, Q New Brunswick.

00:34:55.800 Now I'm actually going to look this up later.

00:34:58.180 Can't you just do like Dildo Newfoundland?

00:35:00.020 I can say that.

00:35:01.120 But Amanda Rouse says her 14 year old

00:35:03.500 has been called slurs and told to kill herself.

00:35:05.540 She says the bullying is a heavy burden for her child

00:35:08.640 and expects it to continue

00:35:10.340 as schools reopen from summer break.

00:35:12.620 I think that it is horrible

00:35:14.440 that the Rouse's child has been subjected to bullying.

00:35:18.480 I think bullying is terrible, I think it is hurtful, whether it is because someone is

00:35:23.280 trans or gay or of a particular race or, in my case, fat, that is completely wrong and

00:35:29.900 can be very harmful to children.

00:35:31.480 But I would be remiss to not point out that that has nothing to do with the policy in

00:35:37.940 New Brunswick at all, because as the mother acknowledges, this bullying predated the change

00:35:43.560 in the New Brunswick gender policy for schools.

00:35:46.200 It predated it because this has been a persistent problem.

00:35:49.580 So the fact that this policy, which doesn't even affect the child referenced in this story,

00:35:55.600 because there is parental consent, means that it is just fear-mongering

00:35:59.580 and using children going through whatever they're going through as political pawns.

00:36:03.960 And the media bought it up.

00:36:05.320 And what do you know? Not Global News, Canadian Press again after all.

00:36:07.940 So CP is serving them up. Canadian Press is eating them off the platter.

00:36:12.180 And we're all supposed to go along with it,

00:36:13.900 that this is just the shabby journalism

00:36:15.800 that we're having foisted upon us.

00:36:17.720 So that does it for us for today.

00:36:19.620 We'll be back tomorrow

00:36:20.280 with more of The Andrew Lawton Show

00:36:21.900 here on True North.

00:36:23.100 Thank you, God bless,

00:36:24.140 and good day to you all.

00:36:26.140 Thanks for listening to The Andrew Lawton Show.

00:36:28.660 Support the program by donating to True North

00:36:30.720 at www.tnc.news.

00:36:43.900 We'll be right back.

00:37:13.900 We'll be right back.

Juno News - September 05, 2023

Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are on trial

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