Lawyer decries 'double standard' on Freedom Convoy, anti-Israel protests
On October 7, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey handed down conditional sentences to Tamara Lich and Chris Barber for their roles in the 2022 Freedom Convoy. Both Lich and Barber were found guilty of mischief, a criminal charge. While neither faces further jail time, their conditional sentences impose a year of house arrest, followed by six months under a curfew.
“In 45 years of doing this work,” says Lich’s lawyer, Lawrence Greenspon, the Crown and defence have “never been so far apart on sentencing (recommendations) as we were in the Freedom Convoy cases.” Ottawa-based Crown prosecutor Siobhain Wetscher asked for seven years’ imprisonment for Lich and eight for Barber; legal counsel for Lich and Barber sought absolute discharges.
Greenspon says he and his client are leaning toward appealing her conviction. We’ll soon know their decision; documents must be filed within 30 days of sentencing.
In a recent conversation, Greenspon chuckles when I ask about the Crown’s motivation to go after Lich and Barber so aggressively; it’s a question he’s been asked hundreds of times. “Why did we spend upwards of 40 days in trial at a time when far more serious cases are being thrown out because of delay, because they can’t get access to the courts and the judges?” he posits. “Why did the Crown pursue it this way?
“Everyone says, oh, it’s political,” Greenspon says with a shrug, “I just don’t see that connection and I never have. What I do see were prosecutions that were brought by the Ottawa Crown attorney’s office and prosecutions that became epic in length and in intensity, followed by requests for sentencing positions that were found by the judge to be excessive and harsh.”
And, he explains in a very logical, lawyerly way, the judge’s decision became a very important balancing act.
“On the one hand, there’s freedom of expression,” he argues, and on “the other side of the ledger was the interference with enjoyment of property … (and) that side of the ledger is nowhere to be found in the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.” That’s unlike the United States, he notes, where there’s a constitutionally protected right to enjoyment of property.
Unless you’re simply recording your thoughts in a personal diary, freedom of expression always has consequences, Greenspon continues. “In this case, the consequences of freedom of expression, the honking horns, were mostly stopped,” he says, “by virtue of the injunction.”
“The loss of business, the disruption of the downtown core, of people who live in the area within metres of Parliament Hill,” he continues, “is the subject of a class action, where they’re seeking damages for those intrusions on their right to enjoyment of property.”
So there really was no need to criminalize the non-violent trucker protests, he declares. And it was clearly non-violent, he asserts: “How many times did Tamara say, ‘Come to Ottawa and help us in our peaceful demonstration, a lawful demonstration … if you see anybody who’s doing anything improper or illegal, let us know, we will tell the police or you tell the police’?”
Greenspon may not blame the Trudeau government for the heavy-handed charges against his client, but he doesn’t hold back in his criticism of its decision to invoke the Emergencies Act.
“There was no need for the Emergencies Act. It was a complete abuse of power. It’s been found to be just that, by Judge Richard Mosley, a senior federal court judge,” he states, forcefully.
“I know the government is appealing it, for appearances, at this point. But I just can’t see that appeal being successful,” he says. “The Emergencies Act should never have happened. When you look at what Pierre Elliott was dealing with in the ’70s, and the deaths and kidnapping of politicians, and you try and compare that to honking horns and peaceful demonstrations, and hockey games, and that kind of thing in Ottawa … there’s no comparison.”
Sensing we’re finally breaking through Greenspon’s defence counsel persona, I dare to ask how he — a Jewish man who lost family members in the Holocaust — feels about the federal government’s response to anti-Israel protests on the streets of Canadian cities, when compared to their response to the trucker convoy. Is there a double standard?
“Yes, it’s a double standard,” he answers, albeit slowly. “And why is there a double standard?” he asks, more forcefully. “Maybe it has something to do with the fact there’s 1.1 million Muslims in Canada and there’s only 250,000 Jews. Maybe that’s what’s driving it. I don’t know,” he says, quietly.
After a long pause, he reiterates: “But is there a double standard in the way that Tamara Lich and Chris (Barber) were treated versus how the pro-Palestinian protesters with hate messages are being treated? For sure.”
Reverting to lawyer-speak, he explains how “Tamara came out publicly and said, ‘You have to stop these F*** Trudeau signs. He’s a father and he has children and this isn’t right and that’s not why we’re here.’” You don’t see that same kind of condemnation of the messages being carried by the pro-Palestinian protesters, he adds; they hold the Hamas flag or chant Hamas slogans — including “from the river to the sea,” which basically means eliminate all Israelis.
“The other thing,” he notes, “is the truckers, they were invited into the (Ottawa) core, they were told where to park.” It’s a very different circumstance when pro-Palestinian protesters surround a synagogue or protest outside a Jewish seniors home.
Greenspon is an ardent champion of the freedom to associate and express yourself, but there are limits. “We start our Constitution,” he notes, not with a statement of the rights, but of the limits: “All freedoms are subject to such reasonable limits as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.” He smirks, then adds, “It’s a very Canadian way.”
“But there’s got to be limitations on freedom of expression,” he asserts, “and I’m very comfortable with saying: When you’re promoting or inciting hatred against an identifiable group of people, you cross the line.
“The government is now proposing this hate legislation in an effort to give the police the tools which, I would argue they already have,” Greenspon reports, “but you want to make it crystal clear, OK, give them some more tools and actually use them. That would be good … if they actually used them.”
Greenspon, at 71, is still fighting the good fight. And he remains optimistic: “If and when this gets to the Ontario Court of Appeal, my hope is they will send the same kind of message that Judge Mosley sent, which is that the Emergencies Act was uncalled for, and that they will come out and say, ‘This is not a criminal offence. It shouldn’t be considered a criminal offence.’ And then, Tamara will be acquitted.”
An acquittal, he believes, would signal to authorities, across the country, that when you have non-violent demonstrations, which are not promoting hate, these peaceful assemblies should be allowed to continue without criminalization.
National Post
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