Western Standard - May 20, 2022


CORY'S RANT： The ongoing persecution of Tamara Lich.


Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

189.52264

Word count

978

Sentence count

64

Harmful content

Misogyny

10

sentences flagged

Hate speech

1

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Tamara Leach has been free on bail since March 7th, but the Crown wants her back in jail. They claim she violated her bail conditions and is a danger to herself and the public. Is she guilty of something? Or is she innocent?

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 I've been listening to the coverage of the latest courtroom crap that they're putting Tamara Leach 1.00
00:00:06.420 through in Alberta, and it's just nuts. The government's actions against the trucker,
00:00:11.820 trucker's convoy organizer, Tamara Leach, they've morphed into an outright vendetta, 1.00
00:00:16.640 and it's repugnant to watch. Crown Prosecutor Moise Karimji sounded obsessive as he demanded
00:00:22.880 Leach be tossed back into jail for the most flimsy of perceived bail violations. So the
00:00:29.120 court exchanges between the prosecutor and Justice Kevin Phillips were fiery to listen to.
00:00:35.820 The judge repeatedly had to admonish the prosecutor, saying he was surprised by,
00:00:41.760 couldn't Jim, geez, this guy's name is something else, by the prosecutor's decorum,
00:00:45.640 and asked him to contemplate that. And the prosecutor was furious, and he asked the
00:00:50.160 justice to recuse himself from the case, stating he was considering a mistrial application due to
00:00:54.500 the judge's comments. This is just a bail hearing, guys. So what high crime did Tamara Leach commit in 1.00
00:01:01.460 order to bring about such an effort to revoke her bail? Well, Leach is receiving an award from the
00:01:06.420 Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms. It's called the George Jonas Freedom Award. She didn't 0.57
00:01:11.180 demand the award or apply for it. It was granted to her by the JCCF. They give one out to people every
00:01:16.800 year who they felt were worthy of recognition for their efforts to promote freedom. The alleged crime
00:01:22.720 isn't that Leach is receiving the award, but she dared to respond to the email informing her of it,
00:01:28.960 saying that she'd be honored to accept it. That's it. Nothing more. They're framing that as being
00:01:33.260 apparently promoting the convoy. It's insane, and they want to throw her back in jail. Now, Leach's been
00:01:38.960 free on bail since March 7th. She spent weeks in jail already, way too long, and the Crown fought her
00:01:44.920 release on bail tooth and nail. They wanted her to remain incarcerated for months. Leach has had the
00:01:50.320 ability, or I mean, has abided diligently by her bail conditions for all of those months.
00:01:54.800 She's not been traveling, she hasn't been talking to any of the press, and she hasn't been doing any
00:01:58.540 social media. It's telling that the worst alleged violation the Crown could find to her bail conditions
00:02:03.720 was an affirmative response to an award she was being offered. Leach didn't commit to traveling to
00:02:08.620 accept the award, by the way, and she wasn't celebrating or posting about it in social media.
00:02:12.620 All she did was accept it and say she was honored in an email. Due to this, the Crown's willing to tie up
00:02:20.320 it's a harmless woman to languish in jail for an indeterminate period. Bail should only be denied 1.00
00:02:26.540 if the person charged with a crime is deemed to be high risk to re-offend or flee. Now, Leach has
00:02:31.680 been out for months. She's clearly not made any efforts to flee the country, and it's unlikely she's
00:02:36.320 going to. She's got family here. She's got children here. She has a spotless criminal record as well. 1.00
00:02:40.860 She's been a law-abiding citizen for decades. It's not as if she has a propensity for committing crimes. 0.99
00:02:45.140 She isn't a chronic protester or activist. She simply started a fundraiser for a protest 0.70
00:02:51.360 and got swept up in what turned out to be one of the biggest public protests in Canadian history.
00:02:56.220 Aside from being involved in a registered federal political party, her record of public actions
00:03:00.460 is actually pretty thin. Not that chronic protesting or activism are crimes anyway.
00:03:05.500 As for re-offending, Howard, what could she do? It's not as if hundreds of semi-trucks and thousands
00:03:12.140 of protesters are idling outside of Ottawa, ready to seize Parliament Hill and erect bouncy
00:03:16.620 castles again as soon as Leach gives the word. The protests are gone. It's done. There's no sign
00:03:21.620 they're going to be returning anytime soon. If the government did decide to reinstate a bunch
00:03:26.020 of pandemic restrictions, I expect the protests would return, but they would do so with or without
00:03:30.120 Leach. She was really only one person among thousands. The crime Leach committed was to
00:03:35.280 embarrass the government. The state vendetta against her today is based on nothing but spite
00:03:40.040 and vindictiveness. Leach is a symbol of reason and activism that the government loathes.
00:03:47.360 She isn't a crazed, screaming extremist with a criminal history. She's a mother who felt she
00:03:51.460 needed to peacefully stand up against a government overreaching its authority. Her very existence
00:03:55.780 puts lie to the absurd reactions of the government to the convoy protests, and they despise her for 0.88
00:04:01.560 that. Leach is innocent until proven guilty, and she should be granted every possible freedom
00:04:06.860 until if and when she is convicted of something. I mean, in 2019, it hit the news that 326 people
00:04:13.400 in Toronto alone who had been charged with firearm offenses had been released on bail.
00:04:18.920 In Alberta, I wrote on that just recently. It's a column on the Western Standard.
00:04:23.240 There was three young mothers in the last year who have been killed by offenders who have been
00:04:27.460 released despite having violent histories and convictions. Yet here we are spending all of this
00:04:32.260 time and resources trying to lock up Tamara Leach. The motivation for the vendetta against Leach is 1.00
00:04:37.020 political. It has nothing to do with public safety or law. In a year of national embarrassments,
00:04:41.460 this is yet another one. The continued harassment of Leach from the Crown prosecutor is inspired,
00:04:46.820 of course, by a petty, small prime minister who wants to quell any consideration of protests against
00:04:51.760 his government in the future. It's exposing the corrupt and broken nature of Canada's politicized
00:04:57.000 justice system. If Leach is locked up again, the time to protest will return. And this time it'll be
00:05:02.200 outside the course houses of Canada. We can't allow this gross persecution to continue or to succeed.