Canadians, Demand Justice System Priorities That Make Sense

Canada did not put Tamara Lich and Chris Barber on trial for what they did. It put them on trial for who and what they represented.

Their so-called crime? Mischief. Not assault, not arson, not sedition, just mischief. A petty charge so low-level it usually does not make the docket unless someone spray-paints a mailbox or uproots a street sign. Yet here we are, watching the Crown prosecute Lich and Barber with the tenacity usually reserved for mob bosses, or war criminals. Forty-five days in court. Dozens of witnesses. Millions in taxpayer dollars, and now requesting 7-8 years in prison as well as the forfeiture of Chris Barber’s famous Big Red truck. All to make an example of two people who dared to disrupt the narrative and sparked the global resistance that finally ended the COVID madness.

Meanwhile, Canada’s justice system is hemorrhaging legitimacy in cases that actually matter. Since the Supreme Court’s R v. Jordan decision in 2016, which set firm ceilings on trial delays of 18 months in Provincial Court and 30 months in Superior Court, nearly 800 criminal cases have been stayed across the country due to unreasonable delays. We are not talking about traffic violations. These include homicide, assault, drug trafficking, and perhaps most damningly, 268 sexual assault cases, some involving weapons, or bodily harm, according to a CBC analysis.

One Toronto defence lawyer called the trend a “complete collapse” of timely justice. Women’s advocacy groups call it a “chilling message” to victims. They made the time, consequences be damned, but when it comes time to chase down: the rapists, the child traffickers, and the violent gangsters there just is not enough time. It is high time that Canadians take note.

The Lich/Barber trial was never about public safety; it was about warning ordinary Canadians what happens when you challenge the regime. These two are being punished not for inciting violence (which they never did), but for daring to question state authority during a time when questioning was treated as heresy.

Lich, notably, helped organize logistics and communications during the Freedom Convoy. She gave speeches invoking the Canadian Charter. She encouraged nonviolence. Her presence, calm and principled, gave the movement a moral core, and that is precisely why she had to be broken. She made a mockery of the political class and its media courtiers, and she reminded Canadians that their rights do not come with expiry dates.

Barber, a small business owner from Saskatchewan, did what the unions used to do: stand up for working people against bureaucratic overreach. For that, he too was dragged through the mud, labeled a radical, and was accused of “counselling mischief.”

The Emergencies Act was invoked for the first time in Canadian history, not because Canada was under siege, but because Ottawa’s corridors of power were briefly humiliated on the world stage by honking truckers and Canadian commoners in hot tubs and bouncy castles across from Parliament Hill. The media called the protest an “occupation.” The Prime Minister called its supporters “racists and misogynists.” And when the smoke cleared and the trucks left, the state didn’t let it go. It doubled down.

They needed to send a message: protest is fine as long as it’s the right kind of protest. Burn churches? Block rail lines?  Shut down pipelines? You might get a photo op, but park your truck and quote the Charter? Straight to jail, it seems.

There is no world where prosecuting a minor mischief charge with this kind of aggression makes sense unless your goal isn’t justice, but deterrence. This is lawfare, the slow-motion strangling of civil dissent using the cold hands of judicial process. It is, to borrow a phrase, the process becoming the punishment.

The Crown didn’t just prosecute Lich and Barber. It persecuted them.

Every Canadian – regardless of their opinion on vaccines, lockdowns, or honking – should be chilled to the bone, because if they can grind two citizens through a years-long legal meat grinder over a non-violent protest, then none of us are safe when we step out of the government line.