OTTAWA, Ontario (LifeSiteNews) — The four-week-long trial for Canadian Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber is set to begin on September 5 in an Ottawa courthouse close to where the protests against COVID mandates took place.
The Democracy Fund (TDF), in a press release Thursday, noted that Lich’s trial will be a “significant moment in Canada’s legal and social landscape.”
In early 2022, the “Freedom Convoy” of thousands of Canadians from coast to coast rallied to Ottawa demanding an end to COVID mandates in all forms. The peaceful protest was unprecedented in Canadian history.
According to Alan Honner, TDF’s director of litigation, “Tamara’s prosecution shows how a prominent political dissident is treated by our justice system.”
“Many people see Tamara as a political prisoner as her prosecution has been impassioned, and she has already been imprisoned for 49 days on relatively minor charges,” he noted. “The trucker convoy exposed the government’s willingness to invoke extraordinary powers to suppress a nationwide protest that was remarkably peaceful.”
A team of TDF lawyers will be providing “daily real-time insights and updates directly from the courtroom throughout Tamara’s four-week trial.”
The TDF is crowdfunding Lich’s legal costs. A senior and well-known Ottawa criminal lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, is representing her.
The Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) also will continue to provide legal defense to Lich and many other truckers, who the TDF noted are being “sued by Ottawa resident Zexi Li.”
As for Barber, he is relying on local fundraisers to help pay for his legal defense.
Honner noted that Lich “has become the face of that protest, so there is a lot at stake in the outcome of her trial.”
Just last month, Freedom Convoy protestor Eric Lemmon had charges against him dropped.
As LifeSiteNews reported, in June, Lich sat down for a wide-ranging interview with famed Canadian psychologist Jordan Peterson.
Lich told Peterson how after COVID-19 began, she started to do her own research about the virus and the associated vaccines, listening to experts such as Dr. Byram Bridle, Dr. Peter McCullough, Dr. Robert Malone, and others. She explained how she began to doubt the credibility of the government’s approach to managing the virus, which in Canada included harsh lockdowns, mask mandates, and vaccine passports, among other measures.
Lich was first arrested on February 17, 2022, only two days after Prime Minister Justin Trudeau enacted the Emergencies Act (EA), which he claimed was needed to deal with the Freedom Convoy protesters.
Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.
Lich and Barber were charged with multiple offenses in 2022 such as mischief and obstructing police for taking part in and organizing the Freedom Convoy. As reported by LifeSiteNews, Lich was then jailed for weeks on the non-violent mischief charges.
She was last set free from jail immediately after Ontario Superior Court Justice Andrew Goodman granted her bail last August. The judge, in his decision, criticized her earlier detainment as invalid.
Despite being released on bail, Lich is still obligated to uphold certain conditions of release, which include not “verbally, in writing, financially, or by any other means support[ing] anything related to the Freedom Convoy.”
She is also mandated to reside in her home province of Alberta and cannot use social media.
Support for Lich is high in her home province of Alberta
In March, Lich was given a warm round of applause by many, but not all, Conservative Members of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) after being introduced in the Alberta provincial legislature in Edmonton.
Many also see Lich and the Freedom Convoy as a pivotal moment in Alberta politics, as it was shortly thereafter that then Premier Jason Kenney was replaced by Danielle Smith as premier of the province and leader of the UCP.
Under Kenney, thousands of nurses, doctors, and other healthcare and government workers lost their jobs for refusing the experimental COVID jabs, leading Smith to say – only minutes after being sworn in – that over the past year the “unvaccinated” were the “most discriminated against” group of people in her lifetime.
People wishing to help with Lich’s legal fees can contact the TDF here.
As for Barber, Diane Magas, LL.B at Magas Law PC in Ottawa is taking donations for him at [email protected] via e-transfer. The note for the e-transfer should have in it the message, “For Chris Barber.”