Chris Barber and Tamera Leach get conditional sentences for their part in the Freedom Convoy conspiracy to bring down the Canadian government. David explains why they should not have been there in the first place, and why this should never have gone this far.
00:16:23.740I said thousands, if not tens of thousands, but we received letters of support from hundreds of people.
00:16:35.740We've received messages. Tamara has received messages.
00:16:39.740So this was one of those rare cases where I was able to say to the judge, there were some very positive things that happened as a result of this, what was found to be an offense.
00:16:51.740And the positive is that there are a lot of people who were inspired by Tamara's example, a lot of people who were lifted up and given out by what she did.
00:17:01.740Are you satisfied with the verdict? Are they sentencing today, sir?
00:17:05.740Yes. The main objective was to make sure she didn't spend one more day in jail, and that was achieved.
00:17:11.740And so, yes, in that sense, we are still very seriously considering an appeal of the conviction for mischief.
00:17:21.740But as far as the sentence goes, we're pleased that she is not going to be spending any more time in jail.
00:17:28.740Do you think there's a double standard with how the truckers have been treated with jailing, prosecution, enormous resources, compared to the pro-Hamas protests that once meets in Ottawa, Toronto, Montreal and elsewhere? Is there a double standard on this week?
00:17:44.740I think that this case, on its own, demonstrates the conflict between freedom of expression and peaceful assembly, and as contrasted with some of the other protests that you're referring to.
00:18:03.740Just in case you don't recognize this man, this is Lawrence Greenspan, who is Tamara Leach's attorney, and I spoke to him along with a throng of other reporters immediately after the sentencing.
00:18:16.740The Palestinian protest, there's definitely a different way that those are being treated as opposed to the way that this peaceful assembly and freedom of expression was treated in this courtroom.
00:18:27.740Lawrence, was a balance struck by the judge in this case, in terms of freedom of expression, in terms of the right to protest?
00:18:33.740No. No. No. There was none. And in Canada, constitutionally protected freedom of speech, which encourages peaceful assembly, must prevail over the rights of property owners.
00:18:48.740The enjoyment of property. That's not an equal balance, and that's the primary basis that we're considering for an appeal of conviction.
00:18:58.740I don't think, by the way, that anybody had their property rights really violated. Not the way the government is violating the property rights of universal ostrich farms right now.
00:19:15.740I think it just takes the feeling of free speech going forward. The process, of course, the ritual authenticity.
00:19:21.740I'm concerned that going forward, individuals who advocate peaceful assembly, and that's all that Tamara did, was talk about peaceful assembly and encourage people to come to Ottawa to assemble peacefully and lawfully. That's all she did. And if that becomes, and at this point, it remains criminal. It's been found to be the offense of the
00:19:45.720mischief of mischief. If that's allowed to stand, if that's allowed to stand, then I'm very concerned about the future of freedom of expression in this country.
00:19:52.720Lawrence, you are appealing Ms. Luce's conviction?
00:19:55.720We're seriously considering an appeal of the conviction for mischief.
00:19:59.720What about the impact on the people of Ottawa? The judge also acknowledged significant impact on your impression in the city.
00:20:06.720There was definitely, and that was something that we were prepared to admit right at the beginning of the trial, that there was an impact on the people and businesses in the core of the city of Ottawa.
00:20:16.720Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly do not come without some price.
00:20:23.720And in a contest between the two, peaceful assembly, freedom of expression that encourages that, should win every time. Because nowhere in the Constitution are the property rights or the enjoyment of property to be found. Freedom of expression and peaceful assembly are fundamental freedoms that are supposed to be protected by the Charter.
00:20:43.720Were you surprised by the sentence today? Given the range, absolute discharge to seven years, there's really nothing that could surprise me. What surprised me was that in 45 years of doing this work, I've never been this far apart from the Crown in terms of a sentencing position.
00:21:04.720The judge made comments about the Crown's position, and I'll leave you to that.
00:21:09.720Has Ms. Leach ever expressed any type of remorse for her role in this, even though she did not advocate for bondage, but it resulted in $65 million of police costs?
00:21:21.720You heard the portion of the letter that she wrote, and she recognized, as did Mr. Barber, that there were many people in the downtown core and businesses that were affected by the Freedom Convoy.
00:21:58.720One thing we know is that there were many lives, many people that were inspired by her example, by what she said and how she did it.
00:22:07.720There were lives that were changed as a result of her standing up on behalf of many thousands of Canadians, perhaps even tens of thousands of Canadians.
00:23:07.720Before we get into the latest from Universal Ostrich Farms, I just want your thoughts on what transpired today because I'm hearing it from all sectors.
00:23:18.720I was standing next to Ezra Levant today at the incredible scrum with Lawrence Greenspawn and who else was there?
00:23:29.720Diane Magus, who, of course, is Chris Barber's lawyer.
00:23:33.720I haven't seen a bigger scrum than this since my days on Parliament Hill or actually the last the last time I was I was at Parliament Hill last spring, I guess.
00:25:47.720I think I made a difference over the last three years with promoting the story, not only in Canada, but in the United States, where people still say to me, you're kidding.
00:25:59.720Yeah, it's over today after two years and a month.
00:26:02.720So a lot of folks in the U.S. are outraged over this.
00:26:06.720And I think that had some effect in Canada.
00:26:08.720Are you taking any, shall we say, inspiration from this, that maybe there's saner minds are going to prevail with your situation where the government, this time the federal government, this was a provincial government case.
00:27:08.720I really do keep feeling every day that there's always winds of change.
00:27:14.720We have hope all the time that there's good men and good good men and good women and in all walks of of life and in their in their different careers or RCMP.
00:27:25.720There's a lot of great women and men on the on the Supreme Court of Canada panel.
00:27:32.720And this I understand from discussions I've had that the Supreme Court of Canada doesn't like to get caught up in controversial political cases.
00:27:44.720However, this is a case that has garnered a lot of international interest.
00:27:48.720It's garnered a lot captured the people from all around the world.
00:27:52.720And what we're fighting for is for science.
00:27:57.720There is science here that can better humanity.
00:27:59.720And we're fighting not just for the science and leading, you know, technology and innovation with using our antibodies.
00:28:07.720But we are really going after the international trade rules with the World Health Organization and the guide.
00:28:16.720And if our farm even all tested all of our animals and they all tested negative.
00:28:23.720They are all still set to be killed because of our World Health Organization directives that are being passed down to us here in Canada.
00:28:45.720We've been going through this for about 10 months.
00:28:48.720And the longer that this is gone, it's got more people's attention, which is giving us more momentum and more strength to do what needs to be done in this situation.
00:29:34.720I think we are waking up to the idea, ideology that we don't have.
00:29:42.720We have a non-elected governing body that's been acting in Canada for the last seven years.
00:29:46.720That governing body is really making the decisions at our federal, municipal and provincial levels.
00:29:54.720And we need to claim some of our Canadian sovereignty back.
00:29:57.720And it should start with the policies that are destroying our farmers.
00:30:02.720Yeah, you would like to see the CFIA formally charged with cruelty to animals, if only because of the neglect they showed towards spirit, the ostrich that passed away on the weekend.
00:30:15.720And I think there would be tremendous support for that because these people seem to get away with this kind of behavior with complete impunity.
00:30:24.720And they have the nerve to lie about the fact there was a pre-existing condition and nobody's taking this seriously.
00:30:46.720Do you think you can prove that this organization is going to have to be held accountable?
00:30:51.720I sure would hope so, David, because you have an organization that's operating with no accountability, way too much freedom and no oversight.
00:31:02.720So we're the perfect example, the prime example to allow a display of their inabilities to follow their own protocols, follow their own policy.
00:31:13.720And, you know, that they're lying to Canadians about their animal, the animal welfare and the welfare of the animals in their care when they're obviously getting prepared to kill them.
00:31:25.720So the animals are already going to suffer enough.
00:31:28.720They're already going through traumatized moments.
00:31:52.720And you tell me how the criminals are really behind the other part of the police line and they're hiding behind these good men and women and badges and they're hiding like cowards in the corner of our field with animals that are not theirs.
00:32:06.720They don't know how to care for these animals and they don't even know their job and they're hiding in the back.
00:32:11.720They've lied to us about administering the electrolytes to spirit who died with dehydration and due to injuries from the RCMP flying their drones low too low.
00:32:28.720She had leg injuries due to a drone incident from the RCMP last Monday.
00:32:34.720And then she succumbed to dehydration, neglect and animal cruelty by the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, which we had to witness her dying alone, throwing her head back for her last moments of life.
00:32:47.720And that was just wrong when we're standing 300 feet away from her and we have not been aggressive.
00:32:56.720All we've ever shown them is that we just want to care for the, you know, for our animals in a humane way, keeping them calm, keeping them loved until whatever transpires here.
00:33:09.720We just want to look out for the welfare of our animals.
00:33:12.720So we should be, it should have been allowed in there to care for her.
00:33:16.720Um, this, we wouldn't be here with the death of spirit.
00:33:19.720Um, she would have been cared for properly.
00:33:21.720So I do want to see these people, uh, charged and our family does want to see these people charged because it shouldn't be one sided law.
00:33:30.720Uh, you know, if we could get arrested and we were just trying to feed our animals, these animals have neglected and been in inhumane with our animals and they deserve the same thing.
00:33:45.720Uh, they still hadn't bothered to look for the hate group or the, or the individuals that killed your, your ostriches though.
00:33:52.720So, which is, which is very, very suspicious, uh, as far as I'm concerned, but wanted to ask you because I, I, we were trying to get you on the show last night, obviously when the veterinarian was on scene, finally a veterinarian.
00:34:04.720I like the looks of this guy, he looks like he can stand up to the CFIA, but they didn't allow him to test the test of the, uh, spirit body for, for blood.
00:34:43.720As long as we have migratory birds flying overhead of all of our cattle, all of our swine, all of our sheep and us, we will never be avian influenza free.
00:34:55.720So why are we killing all these animals based off suspicion, um, based off if there's one positive test, why are we killing every animal?
00:35:05.720It can't be a one size fits all solution and it has to be stopped.
00:35:09.720I understand that stamping out holds a place, uh, within a large poultry commercial poultry industry, um, barns where there's 30, 40, 50,000 chickens in a barn.
00:35:22.720And, uh, these animals, you know, if they're, if they are going through some sort of virulent threat, then, um, they, um, you know, there should be approved methods of possibly stamping that out to stop it from falling through into other barns.
00:35:38.720I understand that, but it can't be a one size fits all solution.
00:35:44.720We are not, um, international trade and we should pose no risk to international trade by being alive.
00:35:51.720Just guilty by association of two animals that they say tested positive, uh, in December, 2024.
00:35:59.720So was the veterinarian able to assess how many birds were still there, uh, was able to assess the overall health of the herd?
00:36:08.720Uh, so he did an overall, yes, assessment, uh, he didn't think that he'd be allowed to go into the general public.
00:36:14.720He went into the general public with them, uh, just for a drive around because he was looking for birds or ostriches that were in a herd pen.
00:36:24.720And we had a, we have every farm I'm sure has a corral or an area where if somebody has, you know, a little bit of a limp or they've got as something in their hoof for their, this, in our case, a toe, um, we have our hurt pen.
00:36:39.720We have had one half blind hurt one in there.
00:36:42.720We had, um, one with a little bit of a limp arthritis in her knee and a broken toe.
00:36:49.720So, well, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency pushed all those animals into the general public.
00:36:54.720And with a pecking order and the ostriches having territory, very territorial over some of their areas, um, it puts the injured ones at risk.
00:37:04.720I mean, they, they can't fight, they can't defend themselves.
00:37:07.720And so they're, they are at risk, uh, Canadian Food Inspection Agency went out and pushed these animals out into the general public.
00:37:15.720So our vet was able to go do an overall look around.
00:37:19.720The one concerning part though, is he couldn't find any of those birds.
00:37:24.720Uh, so we don't know what they've done with them.
00:37:27.720Uh, he did note that there was water and he noted that there's food.
00:37:30.720So he said over that, he's happy to see that there was food and water.
00:37:35.720But again, in my question to him was, did you witness a feeding?
00:37:38.720And he said, no, because when they're feeding there to feed 26, five gallon pails of food to all of these animals.
00:37:45.720And that's what they're used to from what our eyewitness accounts have been.
00:37:50.720And all of the images and video that pour in, they are not feeding that amount.
00:37:54.720They are dumping the food on the ground.
00:38:10.720They said that he, um, they did their own autopsy.
00:38:13.720Uh, they took tissue samples, which they are not sending out because it won't make any difference.
00:38:19.720They said, if they take an autopsy, if they, whatever the results are on that tissue, uh, even if it's nothing, it won't change the outcome of this.
00:38:29.720So they're not going to take, um, they're not going to send the tissue samples in, which is again, why wouldn't we be looking for something else?
00:38:38.720Why wouldn't we be looking for their, the, the violent threat if we're really concerned about it?
00:38:43.720Why wouldn't we be doing an evaluation at this time to see where we're at?
00:39:00.720So he treated her, but a Canadian food inspection agency said that they will not maintain that treatment because they don't have anybody to do so.
00:39:09.720So we can spend millions of dollars to be here to kill these animals, but we can't come up with a sufficient Canadian food inspection agency vet to keep treating her.
00:39:21.720Um, you know, it just goes to show they're just a kill machine.
00:39:24.720Um, Canadian food inspection agency is purely a kill machine.
00:39:28.720They don't know anything, how to protect or preserve life.
00:39:31.720And they definitely don't know how to preserve our livelihoods of our farmers and they need to be stopped.
00:39:50.720Those that are here in charge need to be charged with neglect and animal cruelty and a full investigation at the very least be put into them, which they've never have.
00:40:00.720And we need to build from the ground up a new vision, a new face, uh, somebody and, uh, an organization agency, the Canadians can start to trust.
00:40:10.720And, um, we have put Canadians more at risk than ever with their behavior because farmers that should be phoning Canadian food inspection agency with a concern because of their decades of mishandling, uh, farmers across Canada.
00:40:27.720Farmers aren't calling them because they're just starting to do the old shoot, shovel, shut up because of their erratic behavior.
00:40:40.720They're no accountability, no oversight.
00:40:43.720They are the Gestapo of, you know, of, of, um, of their league.
00:40:50.720And we have to build something from the ground up and restore that faith and, uh, trust back in Canadians so that we're back to a place of protection again.
00:40:59.720Well, as I say, every time I talk to you, I don't know how you're, you're holding up as well as you do.
00:41:06.720We've got so many fights going on with people who are just trying to destroy what, what, what you're doing there.
00:42:18.720And, and they said, and we just love the fact that you're covering Katie and the ostriches.
00:42:24.720And it's like, that's the second thing they say at the trial, because everybody there is watching, not just this show, but they're watching all of the news about the ostriches.
00:42:33.720They love you as a spokeswoman for that farm.
00:42:36.720They think you're doing a fantastic job.
00:42:38.720And they say, they're all saying now, this is, this is Freedom Convoy 2.0.
00:42:44.720It's the same principles, the same issues here.
00:42:47.720And we're going to, we're going to keep fighting back.
00:42:50.720So you've got so many people that are supporting you.
00:43:33.720You, I saw you on Redacted last night, before I forget this, because great interview, even though, you know, the technical problems at the beginning that you have no control over, and I'm sure have something to do with the government trying to, trying to write these interviews.
00:43:52.720No, it's, it's, it's, it's incredible, but great interview.
00:43:56.720You raised a real bombshell in your literally your last two paragraphs, what you were talking about, about the CFIA again, and their connection to the CO2 carbon dioxide manufacturers.
00:44:10.720And, and you, you, you said that they've, they are benefiting from the production of this toxic gas to kit that that's killing birds, killing animals.
00:44:18.720And I found that just, just incredible.
00:44:21.720But to me, it's, well, what do you expect?
00:44:25.720Why else would they be so invested in the killing of these animals?
00:44:30.720Follow the money, as you know, Jesse Ventura used to say.
00:44:35.720So then we have that Hendrix genetics turkeys in the Netherlands.
00:44:39.720And the only exemption that's been given for avian influenza was by chance a farm, but it's a turkey farm, Hendrix genetics turkey farm.
00:44:54.720And they are in, they have connections with the Canadian food inspection agency.
00:45:00.720They have their, they're partially funded.
00:45:02.720So, you know, they're, they grant their own exemptions when they think that it seems fit, that it's going to benefit their, their pockets.
00:45:10.720And we're seeing Canadian farmers just like us suffer though, because, you know, we don't, we don't have to follow, they don't have to follow the same rules with us.
00:45:20.720Um, so yeah, it's been pretty alarming to go down the rabbit hole too, to see just where, um, all these companies are affiliated and where exactly Canadian food inspection agency falls in there.
00:45:32.720But, um, I'm sure that's going to be some dark, dark rabbit holes that are going to take a lot of flashlights to get out of.
00:45:38.720So, well, I, I really believe that the PR has been so bad and I've talked behind the scenes with people who are equally concerned about the bad PR and they're on the government side.
00:45:52.720And I, I really think you're going to have a happy conclusion to this.
00:45:57.720And I'm not just saying that to make you feel better or because we had some relatively good news today.
00:46:02.720I think the tides have, have shifted in your favor if they were ever not in your favor, but a lot of people in this country immediately say, well, if the government wouldn't lie to us.
00:46:19.720And yes, they, they have intentionally injured us.
00:46:22.720And as a, as a former military person, I found that very hard to believe.
00:46:26.720I trusted the government to look after me, to send me overseas, look after me in combat zones and to be there, whether it was liberal or conservative.
00:46:37.720I just can't buy into that trust anymore.
00:46:39.720After, after COVID I, I took my, my red pill going from somebody who was very trustful of government, even though I was never really enthusiastic about too much government.
00:46:52.720I think what you have demonstrated with the Canadian food inspection agency is just that this is the naked face of government aggression.
00:47:01.720This is the naked face of a ravenous federal government that will do whatever the hell it thinks it, it can get away with.
00:47:09.720And this is why I am so invested in this, not just because I care for you at the farm and these ostriches, but I care about how the government thinks it can take my rights away.
00:47:31.720It is very, it's very unnerving to think based off suspicion that they can come in and kill everything that you own.
00:47:38.720It is unnerving to think that they can come in and take over your property and all of a sudden seize your animals and then tell you that you can't care for them anymore and then neglect them and have, and then treat them inhumanely.
00:48:59.720We are not setting a dangerous precedent.
00:49:02.720There's a dangerous precedent that is set when we teach our children and our grandchildren that antibodies don't exist and natural immunity doesn't exist.
00:49:09.720There is no dangerous precedent in changing a policy that has stopped working for Canadian people.
00:49:40.720Um, and it's really hard for them, I'm sure to keep track of.
00:49:44.720And so, um, yeah, I just, I foresee, I foresee a good outcome too.
00:49:50.720Um, how can we not, I just hope that it doesn't end, um, in the worst way possible.
00:49:57.720And that's with our animals lives murdered because they just didn't want to make the change before the, you know, before, um, before the inevitable.
00:50:07.720And, um, well, no, it's not inevitable.