Western Standard - March 03, 2022


Tamara Lich is a political prisoner in Canada

Topics
Truckers for Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Leach political prisoner
Mentioned
Tamara Leach Hunter Van McElberg Julian Borges Ian Abercrombie David Alexander Calix Lagano Shane Smith Remand Caler Jump
LIVE - Triggered： Ding, dong, the masks are gone! BC's Kid Carson on cancel culture, mainstream media & his new platform.

Episode Stats


Length

5 minutes

Words per minute

224.03

Word count

1,274

Sentence count

109

Harmful content

Misogyny

6

sentences flagged

Toxicity

2

sentences flagged

Hate speech

3

sentences flagged


Summary

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

Tamara Leach is a political prisoner. She was arrested weeks ago and charged with counselling mischief. That's it. Nothing violent, nothing dangerous. Essentially, she was one of a number of voices speaking on behalf of the Truckers' Convoy. She has appeared before the courts twice since her arrest and has been denied bail.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Toxicity classifications generated with s-nlp/roberta_toxicity_classifier .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
Topics generated with Qwen2.5-3B-Instruct.
Hosts, guests, and mentioned names generated with spaCy (en_core_web_sm), reconciled against Wikidata.
00:00:00.000 So let's not beat around the bush with this. There's no other way to put it. Truckers for Freedom Convoy organizer Tamara Leach is a political prisoner. Leach was arrested weeks ago and charged with counseling mischief. That's it. Nothing violent, nothing dangerous. Essentially, she was one of a number of voices speaking on behalf of the Truckers Convoy. She set up a fundraising account.
00:00:20.220 Leach has appeared before the courts twice since her arrest. In the first appearance, her bail was outright denied. Ontario Court Justice Julie Bourgeois, quite the name too, you know, it's appropriate in some senses, felt that Leach was a risk to re-offend, though Leach stated she was willing to abide by bail conditions.
00:00:38.060 Leach appeared again yesterday in a hearing that took nearly seven hours, and the judge reserved a decision on the issue. That's simply a version of judicial cowardice. The court couldn't come up with a decent rationale to keep Leach locked up.
00:00:50.220 So the ball was kicked down the road until next week. It's just another way to deny bail.
00:00:54.380 Now, bail is an important part of our justice system. If we didn't allow people who are considered to be low risk, you know, a low risk to offend, to leave the system while they're awaiting their hearings, our remand centers across the nation would be overflowing within days.
00:01:05.920 Judges need to determine who can be released and who needs to remain in custody. It's like a legal triage, almost. It's a difficult and important task. Unfortunately, though, they're often terrible about it.
00:01:15.760 I've recently, you know, I've spoken before about my recent experience with the justice system. No, I wasn't arrested or anything. What happened with me, at least not that time.
00:01:23.620 A gang of losers went on a crime spree in rural areas west of Calgary, and that included the robbery of a bar I used to own. They robbed it twice in a matter of weeks, along with a whole bunch of other places around there.
00:01:32.200 The RCMP did manage to arrest these guys, the members of that gang, and they were promptly released on bail.
00:01:37.740 Now, in the months that followed them being released on bail, Ian Abercrombie murdered his friend Shane Smith.
00:01:43.500 Hunter Van McElberg killed his friend, Calix Lagano. Execution style in a field with a shot to the head, by the way.
00:01:49.900 Those were two separate murders. These were guys released on bail. The police had them. They let them out.
00:01:55.140 Ian, Shane, and Hunter had all been charged in the spate of robberies that impacted me.
00:01:58.740 This is an example of the bail system failing, and it was at the expense of two lives.
00:02:03.100 During the convoy protests in Winnipeg, extreme activist David Alexander Zegarach drove his car through peaceful protesters.
00:02:09.240 He caused injuries, but thankfully didn't manage to kill anybody.
00:02:12.240 He was released on bail shortly after his arrest.
00:02:15.960 Apparently, people who allegedly, at least, attempt to commit vehicular homicide are not considered dangerous.
00:02:22.080 Now back to Tamara Leach. Her crime was to be an organizer. 1.00
00:02:25.100 She counseled mischief. Big friggin' deal. 0.98
00:02:28.880 That's like the bottom of the food chain on criminal charges, guys. This is not major. 0.86
00:02:33.340 I mean, they keep talking about sedition and people trying to take over the government and things like that.
00:02:36.920 Well, you know what? There's treason charges for that sort of thing.
00:02:39.060 Nobody's been charged with any of that because nobody did it.
00:02:41.540 So what has to be asked is what risk to anybody does she present if she's released?
00:02:47.480 Protests are all but gone.
00:02:49.280 Police have retaken every blockade, and nobody's ready or planning to set up a new one in Ottawa.
00:02:53.400 Do they think Leach will somehow set up a new kind of one-woman blockade and bring Ottawa to its knees again?
00:02:59.740 Do they think she will attack people despite never having a violent history and shown an inclination to do so before?
00:03:05.860 Conditions are usually set upon bail as well.
00:03:08.360 Tamara would likely have to stay away from existing protests and locations. 1.00
00:03:11.840 She'd have to have some degree of supervision, and she would understand that if she violates any of those conditions, she'll land right back in jail. 1.00
00:03:18.540 Now, whether or not she even committed crimes or not has to be determined by the courts.
00:03:22.060 That's the system.
00:03:23.340 But that's likely going to take months, at least, in our slow system.
00:03:26.620 Is it realistic or even humane to keep her in remand over that period?
00:03:30.240 Remand isn't the same as prison, by the way.
00:03:32.080 It's a temporary incarceration, and it's much like solitary confinement.
00:03:35.560 I don't imagine any form of being in jail is pleasant.
00:03:38.200 But remand is worse than other forms because it's meant to be short-term.
00:03:41.480 There aren't the opportunities for recreation, learning, or socialization as prisons provide.
00:03:45.120 That's why remand time is often actually turned into a two-for-one credit when real jail sentences are imposed later on.
00:03:51.100 Judges recognize that remand time is exceptionally punitive.
00:03:55.040 Look, the reason Leach remains locked up is purely political.
00:03:59.520 The Truckers for Freedom Convoy protests, they embarrass the government.
00:04:02.180 It took over the nation's capital for weeks and caused the Prime Minister to humiliate himself as he scrambled and imposed a form of martial law in order to quell the disorder, only to drop it within a couple of days of forcing Parliament to embrace it.
00:04:16.020 The state wants people to see just how harshly they're going to punish those who dare to protest in the future.
00:04:21.920 They're making an example of Leach, and they're keeping her locked up like this before trial is nothing less than a sick, vindictive travesty. 0.57
00:04:28.800 Civil rights were suspended as our inept and panicked government scrambled to try and shut down the protests.
00:04:34.100 Funds have been seized from citizens while free movement was suppressed.
00:04:37.200 In light of these actions, it's not surprising to see Canada taking and holding political prisoners.
00:04:41.460 Every day that Tamera Leach languishes without bail deepens Canada's shame further.
00:04:47.600 And it was even more shameful, you know, when they led her into the courtroom in shackles.
00:04:52.220 What was she going to do? Jump over the desk and fly out the window in a movie sort of scene?
00:04:56.900 This is how absurd this is. We see they want to make an image.
00:05:01.060 They want to scare people. They want to say she's extreme. We have to lock her up. 1.00
00:05:04.320 We have to protect society from her. It's absurd.
00:05:08.120 The other thing they want to say is, don't you dare push back against the government, or you will share her fate.
00:05:14.340 That's what they're doing. And that's what political intimidation and political imprisonment is all about.
00:05:19.440 And that's what's happening in Canada right now. Canada is broken.
00:05:23.140 That's what you're trying to fight against both sides and border-originesia from Caler on Canada. 0.97
00:05:23.720 That's what they make of Brazil. 0.97
00:05:23.820 That's what's happening in Canada right now.
00:05:25.100 What I want to think of India in Canada...
00:05:27.520 Are you going to survive in LatinChic Kingdom?
00:05:28.480 Hayat hat hat hat.
00:05:29.240 Hayat hat hat hat hat.
00:05:29.660 Hayat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat.
00:05:31.520 Hayat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat...
00:05:33.160 H Mojín. 0.99
00:05:33.700 O36uspendedan hat hat hat hat.
00:05:34.200 Pequit B Sahs hat hat hat hat hat.
00:05:35.160 한국奏 hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat.
00:05:38.860 Abre hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat.
00:05:40.540 Abre hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat hat.