You have got to hand it to the CBC for never failing to demonstrate why it should be defunded, deconstructed or completely demolished. It just can’t bring itself to end its obsequious allegiance to its Liberal government benefactors, even when it comes to propping up a Liberal narrative that has been so completely dismantled there is little left to hold it together or give it any credence other than by innuendo, aspersion, and malignment, which is what CBC does.

This example comes from a piece written in November of 2024 by four, yes four, CBC ‘journalists’ to promote one of the Fifth Estate’s new documentaries – ‘Conspiracy in Coutts’. I guess when you have $l.5 billion budget of tax dollars to play with, the idea of having four people write a single ‘news’ story is likely not seen as excessive. While it was intended to promote the upcoming broadcast of the ‘Conspiracy in Coutts’ documentary scheduled to air on November 14 of 2024, folded into the article was some other not so subtle CBC and Liberal newspeak delving into the slippery slope of ‘thought crime’.

But before we get to the documentary and the article, for anyone unfamiliar with the sorry Coutts ‘conspiracy’ saga, here’s an abridged version. In February of 2022, at the anti-COVID mandate protest in Coutts, Alberta, the RCMP arrested and charged four men with conspiracy to murder police along with mischief and ‘weapons’ offences. According to the RCMP the arrests were the result of an ‘in-depth’ undercover operation it had undertaken at the protest. The arrests of Chris Lysak, Jerry Morin, Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick, who became known as the Coutts Four made headline news across the country. Denied bail, the four were held in remand custody for some two years awaiting trial. The discovery of this ‘plot’, the Trudeau government would claim, was the catalyst for its invocation of the Emergencies Act.

Then suddenly in February of 2024, cracks in the case emerged when all charges against Lysak and Morin were dropped in a plea deal wherein each pleaded guilty to a minor offence and were released from custody. A conspiracy theory would be harder to push with only two people contriving to develop a murder plot. Carbert and Olienick would remain in jail another four months before going to trial in the spring of 2025, where they too would be cleared of the conspiracy charge, blowing up the entire conspiracy case – and Trudeau’s excuse for invoking the Emergencies Act. No one had conspired to kill cops in Coutts. Both men were still convicted of mischief and firearms possession charges and sentenced to prison. Olienick is currently serving out his sentence while Carbert was released, pending his appeal of the convictions.

Yet, CBC just couldn’t let go of the conspiracy angle of the case, so it decided to have its flagship investigative news program The Fifth Estate produce the documentary “Conspiracy in Coutts”. Purported to be a thorough probe into the Coutts case, it was essentially a hit piece to keep the ‘conspiracy to kill cops’ myth alive, and thereby the Liberal government’s rationale for its use of the Emergencies Act, while again convicting the men in the court of public opinion, just as it had upon their arrests.

But, the program took a novel approach to the case striving to convince viewers to forget the men weren’t convicted of plotting to kill cops. Instead, according to CBC logic, their real crime was the ‘wrong-think’ of opposing COVID mandates by viewing them as government overreach and authoritarianism, all of which was driven by a host of extremist ideologies. That, it claimed, was the real ‘Conspiracy in Coutts’ and that is a very slippery slope. And the article just further advances that hypothesis with the tired old trope peddled by the CBC in lockstep with the Trudeau government. That being that Canada is rife with people holding dangerous extremist right wing beliefs that could lead to violence, and that those extreme views are fuelled by conspiracy theories, misinformation and the Coutts case is proof of that. This is how the headline of the article reads – RCMP videos show how extremist ideology fuelled armed Coutts protesters, followed by the subheading – Conspiracy-driven violence growing concern for Canada ‘experts’ say.

And who are those ‘experts’? ‘Experts’, hand-picked by Fifth Estate producers, who generally see ‘right wing extremists’ lurking around every corner of Canadian society. That would be ‘extremists’ whose beliefs include wanting less government in their lives; opposing government policies that infringe on free speech, parents who want schools to stop indoctrinating their kids in gender ideology and critical race theory; questioning government edicts on ‘climate change’ that translate into increased hardship and taxes for middle and lower classes, criticizing lax government immigration policies and refugee/ asylum claims; and even espousing ‘traditional values and views’, particularly Christian ones.

The article relies on some ten hours of video provided to The Fifth Estate by the RCMP, of its interrogation of Olienick and Carbert following their arrests. Where the CBC says: “Police evidence obtained by The Fifth Estate shows their actions were fuelled by extremist beliefs… both men detailed how they saw the pandemic as a sign of an inevitable collapse of society. That has raised new concerns about the danger conspiracy theories might pose for Canada in the future.” So, the thoughts of two exhausted and bewildered men arrested in midnight raids – extracted during lengthy interrogations by police — raises concerns of how conspiracy theories might pose a danger to the entire country. It makes one wonder who exactly is expounding conspiracy theories?

This, according to CBC, is how the RCMP uncovered the ‘extremist ideology’ driving the men's actions. Actions to kill police — a charge none of them were convicted of. Nevertheless, CBC persisted with this ‘ideology’ chestnut by cherry picking quotes from both men. This Carbert includes telling police, "I'm probably too deep down the rabbit hole, but it scares me … from seeing all these elites doing what they're doing and stuff. I think they're evil…”

So that’s the sum total of Carbert’s ‘extremist ideology’? Seeing the pandemic as a sign of an inevitable collapse of society and meanderings over the evil things ‘elites’ are up to. What he meant by ‘the elites’ isn’t clear because the article doesn’t clarify it, nor do his interrogators. One can only suppose he might mean the rich and powerful and/or the politicians imposing pandemic restrictions? Perhaps evil is a strong word to use, but in the aftermath of the pandemic, it is clear that the restrictions, lock downs and various other COVID mandates imposed on the people by the leaders of various countries, including Canada, hurt the poor, the disenfranchised and the working and blue collar classes the most – financially, socially and psychologically — and the effects are still being felt three years later. The rich got richer and the poor got poorer and there are countless studies and reports that document this including this one from the Fraser Institute published in 2023. Whether this happened by accident or design remains an ongoing argument between the left and the right. The Fraser Institute report makes the argument that even when decision-makers and leaders realized the lock downs and restrictions were doing more harm than good, they doubled-down on them.

Given this, was Carbert being conspiratorial in his thoughts or was it just the way he expressed them that allowed the RCMP and CBC’s ‘experts’ to twist them into some type of extremist ideology?

When talking about ‘elites’ Carbert also referenced the World Economic Forum (WEF) which CBC quickly claimed is often the focus of ‘conspiracy theories’. That’s no surprise, given the its apocalyptic alarmism about ‘climate change’ and proposing ‘The Great Reset’ in the aftermath of the pandemic. Its critics, of which there are many, view the motives of the very rich and powerful who comprise the WEF, as an attempt to undermine the sovereignty of nations by centralizing power and decision-making in the hands of the powerful few, at the expense of individual freedoms, while imposing progressive ideas, such as open borders and mass immigration, on traditionally-minded populations.

Then there is its ‘leader’ Klaus Schwab who, with his thick German accent and mannerisms, fits the caricature of any villain from a James Bond or Indiana Jones film. I guess CBC can include Canada’s most famous clinical psychologist, author and political commentator Jordan Peterson as a WEF conspiracy theorist for his criticism of the organization. Conservative Party Leader Pierre Poillievre has also voiced his opposition to WEF, stating on numerous occasions he has forbidden members of his caucus from being involved in it in any way. CBC, in response, did a hit piece on Poillievre for ‘embracing conspiracy theories' in August of 2023. So, according to CBC, anyone who criticizes the WEF or questions its motives is a conspiracy theorist.

The piece then moves on to Olienick, who might be described too naive and trusting and the interrogators take advantage of that. It does note that Olienick denied any attack on police was planned, but then it describes how he told police he believed people needed to ‘defend themselves from government tyranny’. He also said that he believed people had to look after one another if society were to face some type of collapse. And while he didn’t get the name right Olienick did predict that the government would “pull the Insurrection Act”, to end the protests, which it did in the form of the Emergencies Act on February 14th, to spark a major police action to take down the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. So, is it extreme or conspiratorial to say people need to defend themselves from government tyranny, when one is attending a protest that is opposing what is viewed as government overreach into peoples lives? Is accurately predicting that the said government will use heavy handed emergency legislation to end such protests conspiratorial?

The article also makes quite a fuss about the RCMP’s search of Olienick’s property some 200 miles away from the protest site where they found a ‘stash’ of stockpiled food, as well as tactical gear and gas masks (most, which they neglected to mention belonged to his deceased father a Canadian Armed Forces veteran who served on international peacekeeping missions). They also said police found guns ‘strewn across his property’; a deliberate misrepresentation, as Olienick was a well known responsible gun enthusiast whose firearms, that CBC references, were all properly stored and legally owned. They also found Olienick’s personnel journal which contained what might be described as private religious ramblings from a man, who from all accounts, including his own, is deeply religious. Portions of the journal were presented by the Crown at his trial, but the judge instructed the jury to treat them as ‘thoughts’ not evidence of a conspiracy. I guess CBC decided to overrule the judge.

CBC also goes out its way to quote sections of Olienick’s interrogation where he expresses his dislike and condemnation of Trudeau. He tells police he thinks he should be tried for treason and hanged. Is that a bridge too far? Not in a free country, where anyone can criticize or condemn their political leaders and many Canadians have done so, expressing their extreme dislike of the Prime Minister in various manners. Yet, at the core of Olienick’s comments, he is still suggesting that any punishment be meted out within the confines of the justice system, not by some violent type of vigilantism or assassination.

The article asserts the interviews, “show the effort RCMP made to get the two men to open up to explain a trove of firearms pulled from an RV in Coutts...” Except it really doesn't explain how that is connected to a ‘conspiracy to kill police’ and omits some key things. The so-called ‘trove’ of firearms didn’t just come from Carbert’s RV and most of the material displayed in the photo the RCMP released, in an effort to condemn the Coutts Four, had no links to them. In fact the it has never given a full accounting of who owned a large number of those firearms and other paraphernalia.

The CBC also omitted information that likely accounted for Carbert’s comments and frame of mind during his interrogation. He requires a prescribed medication that was denied him for the duration of that interrogation and lack of it can cause him to become nervous and agitated and somewhat paranoid. But why bother with such details if it interferes with the narrative of his having these ‘extremist views’.

The article claims that police learned during their questioning that Olienick and Carbert had been spending time together in the months leading up to the protest. This is another stretching of the truth. Olienick is what could be described as a ‘survivalist’ and at his farm he did hold sessions teaching people how to preserve and can food, sew their own clothes and garden. Not exactly ‘extremist’ activities. Carbert apparently attended a few of those sessions, but not on any regular basis.

What CBC is implying in this article exemplifies the slippery slope with respect to free speech that Canada, under the Liberal government, has been sliding down for the last decade. It comes back to the ‘crime’ of ‘wrong think’, because these men weren’t arrested or convicted for their actions, but rather their thoughts. Thoughts that the CBC and its ‘experts’ try to mould into actions they didn’t take and violence that didn’t happen.

The interrogation scenarios underscore this. Olienick and Carbert were the only two of interrogated by the RCMP where they expressed their thoughts at great length. Lysak was also questioned, but didn’t say much more than telling them he just wanted to be left alone to raise his kids. Morin, by all accounts, wasn’t interrogated, and if he was the RCMP have never released videos of it. Lysak and Morin eventually had all the charges dropped against them, while the other two men proceeded trial. Despite the best efforts of a very zealous Crown prosecutor, he couldn’t convince a jury that their ‘thoughts’ amounted to a conspiracy to kill police.

But, CBC’s ‘experts’ didn’t agree with the verdict. One of them is Kurt Philips, who is a board member with the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), an organization with long-time association with the Liberal Party, and received generous funding from the Liberal government under Trudeau. It also proudly heralds that it only investigates ‘right wing extremism’, and has no interest in doing so for any leftist extremist movements — such an environmentalists who try to blow up gas lines or Black Lives Matter. But there is no bias or agenda here at all.

Quoted in the article, Philips claimed, “The videos show the men held an extreme world view in which they believed their lives and way of life were under threat from not only the Canadian government but also a global network of powerful agents.” He then adds, "If you have people who are already kind of geared up for some sort of violent confrontation, it's hard to talk that down.”

But there was no violent confrontation; and they were ultimately they were found not guilty of conspiring to murder police. That is despite the article noting that Justice David Labrenz in sentencing the men contended that they were prepared for a ‘fire fight with police’. While a jury convicted them on the offence of possessing a weapon for dangerous purposes, the purpose wasn’t to kill police, because in that regard they found them not guilty. So it seems the judge’s comment, may have had more to do with justifying the unduly tough sentences he gave the men, which many of the men’s supporters believe was politically motivated, given the high profile of the case.

Phillips then goes on to make this outlandish assumption about them. “They genuinely probably thought they were going to be written about as heroes in history books, that they would go down as people who helped save the country from tyranny."

There is nothing from their interrogations to remotely suggest that they had this type of belief about themselves which, again, makes one wonder who the real conspiracy theorists are. The other experts quoted in the article also make ominous comments arguing that authorities weren’t fully equipped to understand the conspiracy theories espoused by the men, warning that extremist ideologies based on conspiracies should be taken more seriously. Does that sentence even make sense? How much more serious can it get than to charge four men with conspiracy to kill police and jail them for two years before they even go trial?

This same expert who came to that conclusion, Kelly Sundberg, a criminologist at Mount Royal University in Calgary, also made the following prophecy, that has yet come to pass, “There needs to be more preparation, because this isn’t going to be the last time.” An interesting statement, given this wasn’t a ‘first time’, nor has their been a ‘second time’ of attacks from right wing extremists anywhere in the country. There have been pro-Palestinian and pro-Hamas groups marching through the streets of most major cities for over two years now, chanting for the end of Israel, snarling up traffic by praying in the streets, threatening and harassing Jews, burning Canadian flags, and, on occasion, smashing windows and damaging public and private property, but no right wing extremists to be found.

The article goes further to also demonize the people who supported the men and actually believe the men were being punished for standing up for the rights of Canadians. This again coming from the spokesman for the CAHN, Philips, claiming that Carbert and Olienick are ‘true believers’, and that, "These are people who no amount of time in jail is going to change that. They can't think of themselves as being criminals and neither can their supporters.”

Phillips went on to make this statement to underscore his belief that these men were right wing extremists driven by conspiracy theories:

"They might change the boogeyman such as it is, but ultimately the same groups and same people are kind of feared and demonized and the main focus is on distrust… of the government. "

When you hear statements like this from a so-called expert on ‘right-wing extremism’ who has apparently been ‘studying’ it for 25 years it makes you wonder who the real extremists and boogeymen are.

Because when you strip it all away, the RCMP claimed to have uncovered a ‘conspiracy to kill police’ at the Coutts protest, but the four men they arrest, jail and charge with the crime are all eventually exonerated. The Trudeau government claims this was reason it had to invoked the Emergencies Act, but the rationale falls apart, not just with the exoneration of the men, but also when a Federal Court rules that the invocation of Act was unconstitutional and illegal. But the Trudeau government’s state broadcaster and propagandist the CBC continues to maintain the narrative, by claiming the real conspiracy is what the men thought and that’s a slippery slope for free speech in Canada. Its also a reminder that the Liberals under Mark Carney are still intent on passing Bill C-63 the On-Line Harms Act, which many civil liberties organizations and advocates fear that the bill’s broad scope and sweeping powers of the Digital Safety Commission, it would establish, could lead to a ‘chilling effect; on people’s willingness to express their thoughts online. Another major point of contention is a Criminal Code amendment that would allow judges to put people deemed a ‘high risk for voicing online hate” before they have even done so, under house arrest. Given all of this, again, one really has to wonder who the real boogeymen and extremists are in this equation.

A few months after the Fifth Estate aired Conspiracy in Coutts, I reviewed the entire documentary dissecting and exposing its bias, lies and deceitful reporting in a series of three part series of articles under the title — Taking Down CBC Fifth Estate’s Documentary “Conspiracy in Coutts.

That's a good question, because, does anyone remember the Coutts Nine? Does anyone even know who or what the Coutts Nine are? We should, given that they were arrested along with four other men who were charged with conspiracy to murder police at the COVID 19 mandate protest in the town of Coutts, Alberta. A protest that coincided with Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa that took place in the winter of 2022. Those four men came to be known as the Coutts Four, and while conspiracy charges were not laid against the Coutts Nine, it was implied, at the time of their arrests, by the RCMP and the government and the media, that they were involved in that plot. To that end they were all charged with mischief and weapons possession offences, and we have heard little of their fate since.

Coincidentally all those arrests occurred just hours before the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act on February 14th, to crush the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. They were the result of a series of raids carried out by the RCMP at Coutts as part of an undercover operation it had launched within the protest. The raids, according to the RCMP, were sparked by reports of an ‘imminent threat’ from three female undercover officers who had been assigned to infiltrate and monitor the Coutts protest as part of this operation.

These thirteen people, who had been participating in the Coutts protest, were, according to Canada’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino, part of a ‘criminal organization’ plotting to kill police and overthrow the government. The RCMP also seized a ‘cache’ of weapons ‘associated’ with this ‘organization’; a picture of which was released along with its announcement of the arrests.

A picture that was obviously intended to support the emerging government subterfuge of this dangerous ‘highly organized’ gang of criminals that Mendicino had publicly described in the following manner:

"The dangerous criminal activity occurring away from TV cameras and social-media was real and organized… We need to be clear-eyed about the seriousness of these incidents… several of the individuals at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right, extreme organization with leaders in Ottawa… a group that is organized, agile, knowledgeable and driven by an extremist ideology where might makes right. What we're beginning to see… are the hallmarks of a sophisticated and capable organization of a small number of individuals, with a steel resolve, driven by an extreme ideology that would seek to overthrow the existing government.” Marco Mendicino February 14, 2022

Seemingly wanting to prop up Mendicino’s statements, Alberta RCMP Chief Superintendent Trevor Daroux said the threat posed at Coutts was “very serious,” and that RCMP were looking at the investigation from a number of angles, which could, according to Daroux, include organized crime and terrorism laws. Yet, no such charges in that regard were ever laid against any of those arrested. Just as an aside, Daroux in now a Deputy Commissioner and Commanding Officer of the Alberta RCMP.

The Trudeau government would claim that the discovery of this ‘plot’ and the serious charges laid against the four men, along with the nine others seemingly associated with them, was the catalyst for its decision to invoke the never before used Emergencies Act. A move that ushered in martial law across the country and gave the government unprecedented powers which it used to take down the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa. Something that had been a thorn in Trudeau’s since its arrival in the city to protest COVID 19 government mandates three weeks earlier.

The Coutts Four Saga

The four men charged with conspiracy to murder police – Chris Carbert, Chris Lysak, Jerry Morin and Tony Olienick – were denied bail for over two years on the grounds of – the need to maintain confidence in the administration of justice. Something that could only be described as the flimsiest of legal grounds, given that none had criminal records* or presented any type of flight risk, or were armed at the time of their arrests – all of which are the usual reasons for withholding bail. Dubbed the Coutts Four – mainstream media portrayed them as the notorious quartet that had plotted to kill cops or alternatively they were viewed by their supporters as four men being held by the ‘state’ as political prisoners.

*Chris Carbert did have a record related to drug possession charges from his youth.

They would spend those two years in custody awaiting the dispensation of their cases bogged down with legal wranglings of late disclosure of Crown evidence, accusations of prosecutorial misconduct against the Crown and questionable circumstances under which the RCMP obtained search warrants to conduct the raids resulting in their arrests. Despite these controversies and their denial of bail not a single major media organization in the country, nor any member of the government or opposition parties questioned their circumstances. They didn’t find it odd that they were serving time, while not yet convicted of any crime, given the career criminal were granted bail within hours or days or their arrests, or the fact that their arrests so conveniently coincided with Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.

But then things appeared to begin to unravel, when, in February of 2024, the Crown prosecutor on the case Steven Johnson, suddenly dropped all charges against Morin and Lysak in a plea deal, wherein both men pleaded guilty to very minor offences. They finally tasted freedom, just a week short of having spent two years of their lives in jail for crimes on which they had been exonerated. No reasons were ever provide by Johnson for dropping the charges. Carbert and Olienick would remain in jail and go to trial in the summer of 2024. They too, would be cleared of the conspiracy charge, blowing the government’s and the RCMP’s bogus assertion of a ‘criminal organization’ plotting to kill cops, out of the water. They were still convicted of the mischief and gun possession charges and sentenced to six and half years in prison which they are now serving. In June of this year Carbert was granted bail, pending the appeal of his conviction on a weapon possession charge.

The Coutts Nine Saga

This brings us back to the Coutts nine, those nine other people, all of whom were arrested and charged with mischief and weapons offences and apparently tied to this ‘plot’. The RCMP provided very little information on the circumstances of their arrests. Nothing about where they were arrested, no explanation regarding their involvement in this plot or their relationship, if any, to the four men charged with conspiring to murder police (RCMP). We’ve heard virtually nothing of their fates with respect to the charges they were facing.

Did they have court appearances? Were they ever tried and/or convicted of the offences with which they were charged? Did any of them testify at the trial of the remaining two men of the Coutts Four – Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick? CBC’s Fifth Estate produced an hour-long documentary ‘investigating’ the “Conspiracy in Coutts” – which was the title of the program – and not a single mention was made of these people who were supposedly part of this mythical ‘criminal organization’ Mendicino had dreamed up.

Yet, at the time of the arrests of these nine ‘associates’, the mainstream media made every effort to dramatically portray them as the ‘hardened’ criminals Mendicino claimed they were. This is how the CBC described them in an article posted on its website on February 17, 2022.

“Previous criminal convictions, a willingness to die for the cause and connections to a violent insurrectionist movement. CBC News has learned new details about some of the men and women arrested in connection with the Coutts, Alta., border blockades on Monday. Thirteen people were charged following incidents involving physical threats to RCMP officers' safety and raids on trailers near the protest area, which resulted in the seizure of a cache of weapons and body armour.”

This description was prefaced by the following statement: “On Monday, Mounties said they received information about a small organized group within the larger protest. That group, according to RCMP, had access to a cache of firearms and ammunition. In a raid of three trailers, officers seized long guns, handguns, multiple sets of body armour, a machete, a large quantity of ammunition and high-capacity firearm magazines.”

Introducing the Coutts Nine…and the details of their arrests

Above are photos of the Coutts Nine — the nine other people arrested along with the Coutts Four– Jaclyne Martin 39 who is the wife of Jerry Morin, Joanne Person 62, Luke Berk 63, Ursula Allred 22, Evan Colenutt 23, Janx Zaremba 18, Eastin Oler 22, Justin Lyle Martin 22, (no relation to Jaclyne Martin) and Johnson Law 39.

In reality two of the nine did have some type of record involving assault convictions from years ago; but this was hardly a bunch of career criminals with serious or lengthy arrest records, nor had any of them made any type of ‘physical threats’ to police at the protest as stated by the CBC. A statement that has never been retracted.

Jaclyne Martin, the common law spouse of Jerry Morin, one of the Coutts Four, was a New Brunswick native who moved to Alberta seeking greener pastures and better opportunities. There she found work as a sales representative, and while not seeking love, she found it in the person of Jerry Morin. Outspoken about her political beliefs and concerned about the direction in which the country was going and certainly opposed to the loss of freedoms brought about by the government’s COVID restrictions, it is not difficult to understand why she supported the convoy protests. She was the only one of the nine arrested to testify at the trial of Carbert and Olienick where she essentially challenged the Crown’s entire case against the men.

Martin and Morin were not arrested together, nor at the same time, and the circumstances of her arrest were quite different from that of the other eight. When she learned her husband was arrested by an RCMP SWAT unit on February 14th while en route to an electrical lighting job he’d agreed to do for a friend, she was stunned. She immediately headed to the High River RCMP Detachment, where he had called her from to tell her the alarming news that he was being charged with attempted murder. When she arrived there to demand what was going on, the duty officer refused to speak to her and told her to sit and wait. Ten minutes later she found herself being placed under arrest by two other RCMP officers.

She was interrogated several times while being shown the photo of the weapons cache the RCMP had seized; something she repeatedly told them she knew nothing about. Martin was held at the detachment for 24 hours and told she was being charged with mischief over $5000 and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes, although she had no weapon in her possession when she arrived at High River. She was also not allowed to see Morin while detained at the detachment. According to Martin, her arrest warrant, for some strange reason, was made to appear that she was arrested in Coutts, rather than High River.

Jaclyne and Jerry in happier times.

Ironically, neither Martin nor Morin had much to do with Coutts protest. Morin was working on Vancouver Island for most of the 18-day protest, while Martin had been working from home and watching the events unfold in Ottawa on television. When Morin returned from BC, just a few days before the protest would be forced to wrap up because of the arrests, they did head to Coutts with some groceries for the protesters. Later they brought some hockey equipment for the kids and helped arrange for Canadian country singer Lyndsay Butler to entertain protesters. Martin did not know, nor was she even acquainted with any of the others arrested during the RCMP raids of February 13-14, 2022. She was the only one of the nine to testify at the trial of Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick, where she challenged the Crown prosecutor’s entire narrative on the Coutts protest and arrests.

Joanne Person, a 62 year old grandmother, who had been a substitute teacher in the Coutts and Milk River area for several decades, was well known for her small town hospitality. Over the course of the protest, Person extended that hospitality to protesters looking for a place to warm up, to have some hot soup, or to dry damp clothes in the midst of a cold Alberta winter, some of who she had once taught as kids. To them, she even offered a spare bedroom and the living room sofa in her modular house trailer as a place to spend the night. On the evening of February 13th, she and her guests were rudely awakened by what can only be described as an army of RCMP surrounding her home, banging on the door and ordering everyone out of the house. She and her guests were summarily arrested with no explanation from police. Person was manhandled before being handcuffed and thrown into the back of a cruiser and spent two nights in what she described as a filthy jail cell before she was released on bail. Person had given Chris Carbert and Chris Lysak permission to park their trailers her property over the course of the protest. They were also raided by police, and their presence on her property was likely a reason her home was also targeted by the RCMP.

The following five young people who were staying with Person were arrested with her.

Twenty-two year old Ursula Allred, a Mormon gal from Magrath, Alberta also found herself arrested, handcuffed and thrown into the back of a cramped police cruiser along with Person. She and her boyfriend Evan Colenutt, along with a few other friends, inspired by the Freedom Convoy protest, had decided to join the Coutts protest for a few days. She was frightened and completely bewildered by her arrest that night, for what she put down to simply being in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Allred’s boyfriend, 23 year old Evan Colenutt was also at Person’s and arrested along with Allred. A hunting enthusiast, Colenutt had once been charged for hunting off-season. While most of the nine taken into custody that night were released shortly after their arrests, Colenutt was not. This might have had something to do with this criminal infraction of hunting off-season, or perhaps due the fact that he was in possession of a rifle he legally owned, and a tactical vest with a particular insignia on it that would eventually become an integral, but what could only be described the ‘red herring’ of the entire Coutts ‘conspiracy’ saga

Ursula and Evan in happier times.

Janx Zaremba, 18, was the youngest of those arrested as part of the RCMP’s dragnet operation at Person’s property. He had gone to Coutts with his friends Ursula and Evan to participate in the protest. A young outdoors-man, it is not surprising that a trip to the Coutts protest would seem an exciting and exhilarating prospect, after spending two years sequestered at home playing video games in the purgatory of COVID lock downs and other useless government imposed pandemic restrictions. It is difficult to think what might have gone through his mind when he found himself caught up in this nightmare with the prospect of spending the next ten years of his life in prison after already having had two years of his young life stolen by useless COVID lock downs.

Janx (centre) with co-workers at Gemstone Lights where these five young people worked.

Twenty-two year-old Eastin Oler was another of the nine who found himself under arrest and charged that night. By all accounts and appearances he was a true blue Albertan and much like any young rural Canadian man. From pictures of him posted on social media, it’s clear he was a fan of fishing, hunting and driving anything with a steering wheel. With no criminal record he was likely shocked and bewildered by his arrest.

Eastin motoring through the snow on a ATV.

Justin Lyle Martin, 22, who was also arrested that night, grew up just a fifteen minute drive from the homes of Oler, Zaremba, and Allred. Other than knowing and working with the other four youths at Gemstone Lighting in Calgary, not much is known about Martin, other than, like his friends, he likely went to Coutts looking for a little fun and adventure, never dreaming how such a decision would impact his young life.

It is clear that these five young people knew each other and had travelled together to Coutts for the adventure of participating in the protest and nothing more. Getting arrested and having the next three years of their lives turned upside down fighting the charges against them was probably the farthest thing from their minds. They certainly never thought that accepting the kindness and hospitality of a kindly grandmother like Joanne Person would have ended up the nightmare it was for all of them.

The fact that they all knew each and worked at the same place made the no contact provision of their jail conditions unreasonable and unnecessary. The Crown was forced to amend that condition thanks to several appeals from their lawyers. Other bail conditions included that they could not be within 200 metres of any protests or protest events, they could not travel south of Milk River and they were not allowed to be in possession of any weapons and finally, a promise to pay $2000 should they breach any of their bail conditions.

Johnson Chicow Law, was also arrested that evening, but where his arrest took place is not known. He was one of the nine to have a notable previous criminal record. In 2002, he was convicted of assault with a weapon and would face additional assault and weapons charges over the next few years, all of which would eventually be withdrawn. Many of Law’s close friends believed he had turned his life around by 2022 having undertaken the responsibility of looking after his two young daughters full-time. He was released on bail shortly after his arrest, despite having a previous criminal record.

Luke Berk on his bike.

Luke Berk, a motorcycle enthusiast, and the oldest of the nine arrested, had prior convictions for impaired driving, but based on his social media posts, it would appear that he too had turned over a new leaf and taken his life in a different direction; he had found faith. On his Facebook account, in a post from February 8, 2022 he expressed some clear convictions about the protest and government COVID mandates and restrictions. “I’m very glad to be part of something I strongly believe in.” This was followed by a prayer seeking God’s assistance in ‘casting out all the demonic forces at work.’ “Your people are standing firm not just against mandates, not just against tyranny, not just loss of liberty and freedom, but against the evil that has swept across the land.”

So this was the sum total of Mendicino’s ‘organized criminal group’. A kindly grandmother who worked as a substitute teacher, a sales representative, five young people barely out of their teens seeking a little adventure, two of whom were avid outdoors-men, an old biker and a single father who had had some brushes with the law a decade ago. None of them resisted arrest and none of them were armed when arrested. And what can be assuredly said of this group, which includes the Coutts Four, is that they clearly were not group at all and certainly were not, by any stretch of the imagination members of, “a far-right extreme organization that is organized, agile and knowledgeable… driven by an extremist ideology where might makes right…. nor were they a sophisticated and capable organization… with a steel resolve, driven by an extreme ideology that would seek to overthrow the existing government, nor did they have ‘leaders; in Ottawa.” Mendicino’s performance in making such outlandish and over-the-top statements with a straight face is Oscar worthy. It would also be laughable if his lies hadn’t turned thirteen people’s live’s upside down and in some cases made their lives a living hell.

Yet, these arrests, apparently, were the result of what RCMP Superintendent Roberta McKale described, in a press briefing in Coutts, the day following the arrests as, “A complex and layered investigation… where it came to the point where for the safety of the members and for the safety of the public we had to act and act quickly.”

Given what is now known about those that were arrested and the fact that they bore no resemblance to a ‘criminal organization’ is it much wonder that the RCMP and Mendicino were so circumspect and tight-lipped about who these people were and their backgrounds. As their cases progressed through the courts only to be dismissed or reach plea deals that involved dropping the more serious charges, more and more of this monumental fabrication by the Trudeau government and the RCMP was exposed for the spurious and contrived nonsense it was to prop up Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act. A decision that has since been found to have been illegal and unconstitutional by a Federal Court. Regarding the Coutts matter the judge in this ruling, Justice Richard Mosley said:

"In my view, it did not satisfy the test required to invoke the Act, particularly as there was no evidence of a similar 'hardened cell' elsewhere in the country, only speculation, and the situation at Coutts had been resolved without violence."

Despite all of this no media seemed interested in asking questions about what can only be described as a complete debacle on the part of the government and the RCMP.

Dispensation of the Charges Against the Coutts Nine

Luke Berk, Johnson Law, and Janx Zaremba — In July of 2022, Johnson stayed the mischief and weapons charges against Luke Berk and Johnson Chicow Law. Then in December he stayed the same charges against Janx Zaremba. When the Crown ‘stays’ a charge, it is suspending legal proceedings against an individual, with the option to recommence prosecuting them within a year should evidence warrant it. Given it has been three years since the stays, suffice it to say ‘no evidence’ arose to warrant any recommencement. Johnson has never provided reasons for his decision to stay the charges against these three individuals.

Joanne Person — In January of 2023, Johnson, in a brief court hearing, asked the presiding judge to withdraw the charges of possession of a weapon and mischief against Joanne Person. While, again, providing no reasons for his decision. There was a order of forfeiture regarding a .22 calibre rifle found in Person’s home during the police raids. According to Person, the rifle was not hers, but rather had been left in a closet, forgotten by her ex-husband

Person, holding the file folder, celebrates the dismissal of her charges with a group of supporters.

Ursula Allred — In April of 2025, all charges against Ursula Allred were dropped. This was following a 37 month legal battle and the successful filing of a Jordan application which is a legal request to stay criminal proceedings due to unreasonable delays in bringing a case to trial. Limits set with respect to ‘unreasonable delay’ are 18 months for provincial cases and 30 months for a superior court case. Given that Allred was arrested in February of 2022, and by February of 2025, neither a trial or a resolution o her case had occurred she clearly met the criteria for a Jordan application. Allred who had become a mother since her arrest expressed sincere relief to see the end of this battle and thanked the The Democracy Fund (TDF) for their assistance in making the Jordan application on her behalf. Crown prosecutor Johnson has not provided any reasons for the unreasonable delays in Allred’s case.

Jaclyne Martin — In February of 2025, the Johnson withdrew the mischief and weapons possession charge against Jaclyne Martin. Martin, commenting on the Crown’s decision said, “I am overjoyed, as I just spoke with my lawyer and all the bogus charges against me stemming from the Freedom Convoy protest at Coutts have been withdrawn! Hallelujah!” She went on to add, “This marks the end of three years of hell, but the only way out is through.” Given the delays in getting her case to trial, with numerous dates cancelled by the Crown, Martin was eligible for a Jordan application, but she said the Crown — again Steven Johnson, at the eleventh hour dropped the charges, again without providing a reason for doing so. Other than a post from Martin on the Political Prisoners of Alberta Facebook page, there have not been any media reports on the circumstances regarding the Crown’s decision to drop charges against Martin.

Evan Colenutt — In early August of 2025, Evan Colenutt, received a two-year conditional sentence as part of a March plea bargain having plead guilty to a weapons possession charge. He admitted to owning two semi-automatic weapons, body armour and ammunition. The mischief charge against him was withdrawn.

He will serve sixteen months of his sentence under house arrest and the remainder under a curfew. Crown prosecutor Johnson had sought a two year prison sentence – pretty stiff punishment for someone whose only previous brush with the law was an off-season hunting infraction.

Regarding Colenutt’s admissions on the weapons charge, it should be noted that in 2022, there was no prohibition on owning semi-automatic weapons in Canada, and even today only firearms with a sustained rapid-fire capability are not allowed. The provisions for owning body armour in Canada vary from province to province, however, in all provinces and territories, individuals possessing a valid Possess and Acquisition License (PAL) or Restricted PAL (RPAL) are permitted to own body armour. Given that Colenutt was an avid hunter, in all likelihood he did have a valid PAL. Had he not, one would think he would have been charged with illegal possession of a firearm, but the charge against him was for possession of a firearm for dangerous purposes. What those dangerous purposes were remains unknown, to the public and likely to Colenutt, other than the RCMP alleging at one point that he had a ‘militant mindset’.

One reason Colenutt seemed to come under greater scrutiny was due to some decals on one of his armoured vests that were seized during the RCMP raids. The decals — a small black rectangular shaped pin with a white diagonal stripe running across it — were apparently the insignia of a ‘group’ called Diagolon. A ‘group’ that was inaccurately described as a right wing extremist group intent on overthrowing the government, by the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), a left-wing organization heavily funded by the Liberal government. Much credence was initially given to CAHN’s allegations against Diagolon, because it fit so well into the Trudeau government’s and the media’s narrative of some clandestine militant group with visions of overthrowing the government operating in Coutts and the two vests provided proof of their connection to this ‘extremist’ group.

Chris Lysak was the owner of one such vest bearing this insignia and he did appear to have a connection to Diagolon, albeit a social and harmless one, but information was never released to indicate that another one of the vests seized bearing this insignia belonged to Colenutt.

And while the Trudeau government and the media continued to try to paint Diagolon as some dangerous extremist group — relying solely on the information from the CAHN, the RCMP in its own intelligence reports expressed more than considerable skepticism regarding CAHN’s claims about Diagolon:

“Based on the information that is publicly available, it is difficult to understand how CAHN can confidently assert that Diagolon is an ‘accelerationist movement that believes a revolution is inevitable and necessary to collapse the current government system…”

The Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) also largely debunked all the chatter about this, including the CAHN’s allegation. This is how CSIS described Diagolon.

Diagolon is a type of fan club for its founder Jeremy MacKenzie, a decorated Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) veteran who had served in Afghanistan. His website and podcast, The Raging Dissident often used humour and sarcasm to criticize the government and had quite a following. According to CSIS, “He created Diagolon — a fictitious country to inspire unity among like-minded individuals. It represents a symbol of defiance against COVID restrictions and vaccinations. Fans voice grievances against firearm restrictions and promote a variety of conspiracy theories related to government. Diagolon did not call for violent participation in the Convoy… and asked ‘members’ who attended to peacefully support it.”

Chris Lysak was known to be a fan of Mackenzie’s podcast and had actually attended a few barbecues Mackenzie had hosted for his fan base and had his picture taken with him — hence his ‘connection’ to Diagolon.

And just to further demonstrate declining importance of Diagolon in these Kafkaesque antics — Diagolon was never mentioned in any of court proceedings in any of the Coutts cases, not even during the trial of Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick.

No information was ever released to indicate who owned any of the weapons that had been seized, in that now famous picture released by the RCMP except to say they had been seized from the trailers on Person’s property. Person maintains that the only weapon found in her home was the 22 calibre rifle that had belonged to her ex-husband.

The Entire Conspiracy Case is a Nothing Burger

So that is the total summary of what happened to the Coutts Nine and the Coutts Four. This notorious ‘criminal’ group of extremists that were intent on killing cops and overthrowing the government, who also had connections to this ‘groups’ (Diagolon) leader* in Ottawa.

*Jeremy Mackenzie had travelled from his home in Nova Scotia to attend the Freed Convoy protest a couple of times. Other than Lysak, he neither knew or was connected to any of the people arrested in Coutts.

Morin and Lysak, had the conspiracy charges dropped in a plea deal, Carbert and Olienick were found not guilty of the conspiracy charge, although they were convicted on both the mischief and weapons charges, which Carbert is appealing. And of the Coutts Nine — six have had all the charges against them dismissed or dropped by the Crown. One, Evan Colenutt in a plea bargain pleaded guilty to the weapons charge, while the mischief charge was dropped. The two other outstanding cases of Eastin Oler and Justin Martin would meet the criteria for successful Jordan applications given that it has been over three years and their cases have not been resolved. There are no media reports of any resolutions and given that many media outlets reported on Colenutt’s plea deal, if either Oler or Martin had been convicted of anything, it is likely the media would have jumped on it.

So that’s the outcome of the great big conspiracy plot to kill police and bring down the government that the Trudeau and his stooge Marco Mendicino cooked up, with the duplicity of the RCMP to justify invoking the Emergencies Act in February of 2022. A nothing burger. Not one person was convicted of the conspiracy to kill police charge, and only three were convicted of anything — mischief or weapons charges.

This should be a major scandal and a front page story on the bungling and complicity of the RCMP, the deceit and subterfuge or the government, and the ineptness of a Crown Attorney Steven Johnson in his almost pathological desire to reap vengeance of protest participants. Yet, despite his zeal, he was woefully unsuccessful — except to make the lives of 13 people traumatized, unduly stressful, miserable and likely costly given the legal expenses they incurred even if they were to get some assistance through crowd funding or from legal advocacy groups such as The Democracy Fund or the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms. But thanks to a complicit and and captured media that is generously funded by the former and current Liberal government not a single member of that government, of the RCMP or the justice system has been held accountable or will be held accountable for using ordinary Canadians as their puppets in a scheme to formulate a monumental lie to justify its invocation of the Emergencies Act on the Freedom Convoy. It truly reflects a total lack of morality, a complete disregard for ordinary Canadians and the deep rot within the current governing party of Canada.

Part 2 of Taking Down the CBC Fifth Estate’s ‘Conspiracy at Coutts’, recounted the CBC’s version of the RCMP investigation and operation that led to four men — the Coutts Four — being arrested and charged with ‘conspiracy to murder police’ during the protest against COVID mandates in Coutts, Alberta in February of 2022.

Coutts Four — Tony Olienick, Chris Carbert, Chris Lysak, Jerry Morin (Fifth Estate ‘mug’ shots)

Denied bail and jailed for some two years, as they languished behind bars awaiting trial, it became increasingly clear the RCMP’s conspiracy case against them wasn’t solid enough to convict them. But, the Fifth Estate ignored that injustice, and instead decided to take a case that couldn’t be proven in a court of law, and attempt to prove it in the court of public opinion.

Many considered the men political prisoners as their arrests were connected to the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act to crush the Ottawa Freedom Convoy protest.

Part 2 left off with the men taken into custody followed by the video clip of Canada’s Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino announcing the ‘serious’ events at Coutts and making it the cornerstone of his government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.

Questionable Allegations Against the Men

"The dangerous criminal activity occurring away from TV cameras and social-media was real and organized… We need to be clear-eyed about the seriousness of these incidents… several of the individuals at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right, extreme organization with leaders in Ottawa… a group that is organized, agile, knowledgeable and driven by an extremist ideology where might makes right. What we're beginning to see… are the hallmarks of a sophisticated and capable organization of a small number of individuals, with a steel resolve, driven by an extreme ideology that would seek to create to overthrow the existing government.” Marco Mendicino February 14, 2022

Mendicino’s statement is an entire fabrication, because its real purpose was to dramatize the Coutts ‘case’ to set the stage for the Trudeau government to invoke the Emergencies Act to crush the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa — something it had been itching to do since it arrived in the city. It believed citing the ‘dangerous situation’ in Coutts would give it the grounds it needed to declare Martial Law across the country and send riot police into downtown Ottawa to attack, beat and arrest convoy protesters. Yet, two years later a Federal Court ruled its use of the Act was unjustified and illegal. In making its ruling it stated, “the RCMP addressed the Coutts incident using existing Criminal Code powers; it did not constitute a ‘national emergency justifying the Act.”

Thus the Coutts case was what one might call a red herring. Even more so, given that all four men were cleared of the conspiracy charge by the time ‘Conspiracy in Coutts’ was produced. Two were released from custody in February of 2022 when the Crown dropped all charges against them. The two others finally went to trial in the summer of 2024, where a jury found them not guilty of the conspiracy charge. Despite its unrelenting efforts the Crown, was unable to prove allegations that any of them were part of some ‘sophisticated organization’ driven by an ‘extremist ideology’, nor did it uncover any plot to overthrow the government.

The Fifth Estate would have known all of this, still it decided to produce a show to advance its own conspiracy theory — that everything Mendicino said was not a self-serving fabrication, but the truth. It endeavoured to convince viewers to that, in the midst of an entirely peaceful protest, four men — who hardly knew each other — really were part of Mendicino’s dangerous sophisticated, agile, knowledgeable and capable organization who had cooked up a scheme to take on the army of RCMP at the Coutts protest site, and overthrow the government using hunting rifles, machetes and bear spray. And, based on some cryptic RCMP intelligence that was never revealed, these men, driven by an extreme ideology, had a ‘steel resolve’ to carry out that plan.

Dr. Temitope Oriola PhD, Criminology and Sociology Professor at the University of Alberta.

The Fifth Estate’s ‘expert’ Dr. Oriola tried to substantiate that theory by claiming, “This was not just a small band of rag tag criminals.” He’d made such baseless incendiary remarks earlier claiming the men had cops in ‘their cross-hairs’ — when they weren’t convicted on the charge planning to kill cops. Yet, according to him they, “didn’t have the same underlying beliefs as the other protesters.'‘ Those beliefs he and the other ‘expert’ pundits will embellish later with more conjecture and speculation.

RCMP Interrogations of the Men Fail to Demonstrate ‘Steel Resolve’

If Fifth Estate thought airing excerpts of the RCMP interrogations* of the men would bolster Mendicino’s absurd claims that the men were — “organized, agile, and knowledgeable, with a steel resolve, driven by an extremist ideology” — it was sadly mistaken. It would be laughable if they weren’t in so much trouble, because what viewers saw were tired, worn out, anxious, perplexed and often naive men with no steel resolve and did not appear agile or organized in any way.

* There is no video of Jerry Morin being interrogated and CBC doesn’t explain why that is the case.

**CBC noted there were some 13 hours of video of the interrogations. CBC chose specific excerpts in an effort to support its particular narrative.

Olienick is first seen sitting alone tearfully lamenting he just wants to see his mom and his cat. Later he seems to appear more comfortable and starts talking, perhaps a bit too much, telling the cop how wonderful it was that so many Canadians supported the protest, but emphasizing that there was no ‘militia type group’ involved in it.

His views may seem unconventional when it comes to how he views the state’s ongoing imposition of COVID mandates on its citizens. He thinks it’s part of a plan to ‘break the middle class’. His concerns might have some validity if one were to read the book, the New Abnormal: The Rise of the Biomedical Security State by Dr. Aaron Kheriarty. His belief that people might end up in concentration camps may be a little over the top, but is it criminal to have such thoughts? Yet, he isn’t far off the mark when asked how he thinks the protests will end, predicting the government will “call the insurrection act* because… it’s been using that word a lot, then the UN will come and there will be Chinese troops** on Canadian soil.” The only thing he doesn’t realize is that he is part of the plan to enable the government do that.

*The Trudeau government had been referring to the Convoy in Ottawa as a type of insurrection as had their media supporters. By the time Olienick makes this prediction, the government had invoked the Emergencies Act, and within days it will use the Act to freeze bank accounts of the Freedom Convoy protesters and their supporters and send riot police into the streets of downtown Ottawa, armed with tear gas and rubber bullets to arrest and beat protesters to shut down the entire protest.

**While no UN or Chinese troops arrived, interestingly there have been soldiers from Communist China training in Canada. Then there are the recent revelations as just how badly our country and our elections have been infiltrated and influenced by the Chinese Communist Party. So perhaps Olienick’s ‘predictions’ are not as outrageous as many may think.

Chris Carbert is first seen pacing nervously in the interview room. Upset and agitated he says he wishes to be with his son as he sits down with his interrogator. When presented with a list of weapons apparently seized from the trailers and asked if any belong to him, Carbert replies, “I can guarantee all the items listed were not in my trailer.” When asked again if any of the weapons belong to him Carbert appears to shake his head. At this point the CBC narrator, Steven D’Souza, interjects to say Carbert was banned from owning guns due to a prior arrest. What he doesn’t say is the ban only applied prohibited or restricted firearms (AK-47, AR-15/M16 pattern rifles, carbine rifles, handguns). He was not prohibited from owning sporting or hunting rifles and shotguns — most of what was on the list presented to him. Carbert also emphatically denied anybody was conspiring to do anything.

D’Souza also neglects to explain what may be causing Carbert’s visible agitation. Carbert takes a medication called Suboxone® to alleviate withdrawal symptoms stemming from a past drug addiction. As he was not administered the drug after his arrest the withdrawal symptoms he is experiencing likely account for his agitated state. Carbert’s lawyer petitioned against having his interview admitted as evidence at his trial, arguing he was not of sound mind due to his condition. The judge did not agree. CBC had the trial transcripts and would have known this, but didn’t disclose it letting viewers assume, instead, that guilt might account for his agitated state.

At some point a female officer joins the interrogation with transcripts of the wiretaps on the men’s phones. She tells Carbert, “We’ve been listening to you for days and you say to your friends, ‘I am trying to stop this from going to the next level because from here we go to war’…“ She then says, “That tells me Chris, that an investigator looking and putting the pieces of this puzzle together, that you knew what was coming down the pike and you didn’t want it to happen.” Carbert responds, “That’s the whole point of this process, to stop anything from ever getting to that point.”

Despite the ‘puzzle’ she wants to string together, Carbert’s response may have an entirely different meaning. When he refers to “the whole point of this process, to stop anything from ever getting to that point,” could the process be the protest itself, not some plot she’s alluding to? A protest to end the COVID mandates — to stop it from getting to that point — that point being more mandates. That’s all we see of the interview — other than the male cop telling him he must have “had his hands full.” Full of what? Are viewers intended to assume it was to stop a conspiracy to kill cops?

Little of Chris Lysak’s interrogation is shown, and D’Souza notes he didn’t say much to police. In his initial statement he says he just wants to be left alone to raise his kids. In one excerpt the cop says to him, “You had to know about the other guns because they were out in the open’.” “In the house?” Lysak asks rather incredulously. “In the trailer,” the cop responds. That’s all we hear because what D’Souza really wants viewers to see is the diagonal line on Lysak’s shirt.

Raising the Spectre of Diagolon

This is intended to raise the ‘sinister’ spectre of Diagolon, — the diagonal design, is the supposed logo of Mendicino’s ‘sophisticated capable criminal organization*’ A vest seized by the RCMP bore patches with a similar symbol causing the media and government to jump to the conclusion that the four men were ‘members’ of Diagolon.

*Mendicino did not specifically say Diagolon was the ‘criminal organization’, but implied that it was.

What makes this leap on logic even more absurd is that the vest in question did not even belong to any of the four men, though it was implied — by lies of omission. It actually belonged to Evan Colenutt one of the nine* other individuals that were arrested as part of the RCMP raids in Coutts on February 14th.

*Nine other people were arrested and charged in the RCMP raids and it was initially reported that they were associated with the four men — more on that later.

Before delving deeper into what Diagolon is, its important note it was never part of the court case against Olienick or Carbert. Lysak’s plea deal* which resulted in all charges against him being dropped, made any connection he had to Diagolon a moot point. Jerry Morin who, also had all his charges dropped** had never heard of Diagolon. Yet, the next phase of the program works hard to imply these men were connected to this dangerous extremist group — Diagolon. It is another red herring built on nothing but conjecture and fantasies of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), an admittedly left-leaning group that is generously funded by the Liberal government.

*Lysak plea deal involved his pleading guilty to improper storage of a firearm to have all other charges against him dropped.

**D’Souza explains that Morin took a plea deal wherein he pleaded guilty to trafficking firearms at the Coutts blockade. But again there is another omission. Morin, who had been incarcerated in the guns and gangs unit in Calgary for two years, had experienced considerable mental duress, as well as having spent 80 some days in solitary confinement due to no fault of his own. It was believed that Morin’s mental state was compromised when his confession, so much so that when the Crown wanted to enter his statement as evidence during Olienick’s and Carbert’s trial the judge did now allow it.

Nevertheless, the The Fifth Estate decides to beat this dead horse by calling on CAHN board member Kurt Philips to discuss Diagolon and attempt to draw a connection between its ‘ideology’ and the men. He says CAHN quickly recognized that the patches on the vest belonged to Diagolon, which he describes as an ‘Accelerationist Movement’ sympathetic to revolutionary or insurrectionist beliefs. Phillips claims Diagolon ‘members’ believe, “Society is headed in the wrong direction and needed to be reset.” As they saw “no political solution… they were ultimately going to take up arms… that only leaves a violent solution.”

Philips asserted that the RCMP didn’t “dig as deeply as they should have into Diagolon.” “Diagolon,” he said, “wasn’t well known at the time, but did eventually get into the news.” He fails to mention the reason it got into the news was due to the erroneous and unsubstantiated claims CAHN had published about Diagolon on its website which the media and government took as gospel and used to sensationalize the Coutts arrests.

Despite Phillip’s claims, the RCMP did investigate Diagolon, and its intelligence reports discounted all CAHN’s claims about Diagolon. Citing CAHN as the one and only source it said, “Diagolon can only be traced back to CAHN and triangulation and verification of facts is impossible. Diagolon does not pose a criminal or national security threat. It is hard to understand how CAHN could assert it’s an ‘Accelerationist Movement’ that believes a revolution… is necessary to collapse the government. Due to lack of open source material, operational information is needed to supplement the profile. (February 2022). “We do not consider Diagolon a right wing militia group.” (April 2022) “It poses no criminal or national security threat” (May 2022).

A Canadian Security & Intelligence Service (CSIS) report on Diagolon issued in February of 2022, titled Diagolon Participation in the Freedom Convoy, described Diagolon as a type of fan club for its founder Jeremy MacKenzie, a decorated Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) veteran who had served in Afghanistan. His website and podcast, The Raging Dissident often used humour and sarcasm to criticize the government and had quite a following. According to CSIS, “He created Diagolon — a fictitious country to inspire unity among like-minded individuals. It represents a symbol of defiance against COVID restrictions and vaccinations. Fans voice grievances against firearm restrictions and promote a variety of conspiracy theories related to government. The report added, “Diagolon did not call for violent participation in the Convoy… and asked ‘members’ who attended to peacefully support it.”

MacKenzie with the Diagolon flag for the fictitious country he imagined. He created the symbol as a meme to promote his website and podcast.

It further noted that Diagolon had expanded its online presence in 2022 by conducting in-person meetings. This amounted to MacKenzie hosting a few barbecues for fans to get together during lock downs, some of which Lysak had attended. He site was the only one of the four men to have any physical connection to Diagolon.

The Fifth Estate had access to these reports as they were released under Access to Information by the Hate-Gate Report (2023) authors. Instead it relied solely on assessments from Philips, whose reputation was discredited by the Hate-Gate report.

Search of Olienick’s Property — Guns, Ammo, Pipe Bombs and Christian Nationalism?

Viewers are then taken to Olienick’s property where RCMP search a root cellar it calls a ‘bunker’. They find a ‘stock pile’ of supplies, gas masks, and tactical gear, but focus in on the guns, ammunition, and ‘pipe bombs’. When D’Souza ominously mentions the ‘pipe bombs’ he again omits key facts. Olienick’s property sits on a gravel quarry. Mining gravel is part of his business and small explosives like pipe bombs are commonly used in gravel mining. The CBC knew this as it was explained at Olienick’s trial for which they have the transcripts. Also omitted is that the guns and ammunition were legally owned and stored and that Olienick was a well known gun enthusiast interested in survivalist skills — neither of which is a crime.

Police ‘expert’ Kelly Sundberg, almost gasps at the amount of ammo found implying it could only be there for nefarious purposes. Yet, gun shop proprietors, who CBC did interview, might have provided another explanation had they been asked. They often see an uptick in sales when government’s like the Trudeau Liberals threaten to ban firearms — as they have for the past decade — which often prompts gun owners to stock up on supplies. It is also not unusual for prairie residents to have large stores of the ammo found on Olienick’s property to shoot prairie dogs and coyotes.

D’Souza’s claim that the four men had trained together on Olienick’s property with other ‘preppers’ or survivalists is simply not true. Olienick had hosted informal sessions on his property to teach people how to be self-sustainable. This included learning to sew their own clothes, preserve, can and store foods, and to assemble emergency kits — something government’s promote during Emergency Preparedness Week. Somehow this translates into heavy duty ‘prepping’ and survivalist training? Carbert attended two sessions and was the only one of the four men to do so.

The documentary moves onto Olienick’s private journal found in his home. In it they find many religious references that may appear somewhat apocalyptic. This causes Oriola, to jump to the conclusion that Olienick, along with his three co-accused are Christian Nationalists, yet another group targeted by CAHN as right wing extremists associated with the Freedom Convoy* and yet another erroneous claim by Oriola.

*CAHN referenced a banner seen at the Freedom Convoy bearing the verse 7:14 2 Chronicles — God warns Solomon if his commandments aren’t followed, his temple will be destroyed and people expelled. “If My people who are called by My name will humble themselves, and pray and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin and heal their land,” It maintained this text is often invoked by American evangelicals to support their claim of being responsible for “morally or spiritually healing their country.”

What again is not mentioned is that Olienick is a deeply religious man. It was his faith that helped get him through the two and half years of hell he spent in remand custody. It’s disturbing to see a man’s personal religious convictions laid bare and be falsely labelled a so-called Christian Nationalist without a shred proof other than a few words in a personal diary. If he was a Muslim, would Oriola have labelled him an Islamic Extremist based on a few words in a diary?

The Trial of Olienick and Carbert

The first thing the D’Souza says about the trial is that the jury didn’t see everything the Fifth Estate revealed to viewers, likely because some evidence was ruled inadmissible by the judge. But, the implication seems to be that that if the jury had seen everything — it may have convicted the pair on the conspiracy charge. D’Souza says it all came down to one question. Did the men have a plan to attack police? He admits the jury wasn’t convinced they did, and found them not guilty of the conspiracy charge. It did, however find them guilty of the mischief and firearms possession charges and Olienick was also found guilty of possession of a pipe bomb.* Both were sentenced to six and half years in prison, including time served.

* Due to the fact that he didn’t have a valid permit for the device, rather than being in possession of it.

Nine other people were charged in those RCMP raids, yet none appeared as witnesses at the trial save for one — Jacelyn Martin* nor were they referenced in the Crown’s case. The Fifth Estate gives them a cursory mention, yet CBC in its initial reporting on Coutts in February of 2022, clearly indicated they were associates of the four men and this ‘criminal organization’. In reality, none had any connection to the men at all.

*She is Jerry Morin’s common-law wife.

Also not mentioned is that of the nine charged — with mischief and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes — five have since had all charges against them dropped — Jaclyn Martin, Janx Zeremba, Luke Burke, Johnson Law and Joanne Person. The four others, Ursula Allred, Justin Martin, Easton Oler and Evan Colenutt who was the actual owner of the vest with the Diagolon patches, have yet to go to trial — more than three years after their arrests! For more background on these people and their arrests, Alex Zoltan, a reporter for True North Media has posted a very detailed account of it all on X.

Fifth Estate’s ‘Experts’ Rush to Condemn

The Fifth Estate’s ‘experts’ then chime in to advance the Fifth Estate’s conspiracy theory — that they should have been found guilty of the conspiracy charge.

According to Oriola another jury could have reached a different verdict with the same set of facts. He believes they should have been convicted because, “There is no doubt they were ready… willing and able to engage the police in a shoot out.” He credits the the ambiguity in defining the threshold point at which they were prepared to ‘engage’ the police as the factor that with saved their case. In conclusion he says,“These are extremely privileged individuals. They got away very lightly and should consider themselves extremely fortunate.”

It probably a bad idea for for Olienick and Carbert bring weapons to Coutts, but to say they got away lightly for doing so is a stretch. The firearms were stored in the trailers and were never brought to the actual site of the protest. None of the men were found to have firearms on their person when they were arrested. And the pipe bombs were on Olienick’s property some 200 kilometres away.

Then to go on and so say they were “privileged and fortunate”? “Privileged” to be pawns in a gambit by the Trudeau government aided and abetted, it would seem, by elements of the RCMP, to concoct and conjure up an implausible scenario of four working class man secretly plotting to kill police during a peaceful protest? “Fortunate” to be ensnared in a plot ‘uncovered’ by the RCMP that empowered the Trudeau to invoke the Emergencies Act to declare Martial Law across the country and crush the Freedom Convoy. I guess they were further privileged for having been ‘guests’ of the state, spending over two years in remand hell awaiting a trial while a vindictive Crown prosecutor, who knew he didn’t have a winnable case, used every trick in the book to try and convict them of a crime that never occurred.

After having Oriola rationalize why they should have been convicted, the Fifth Estate turns to CAHN’s Kurt Phillips make dubious claims about the men’s ‘extremist ideology’ still trying portray them as Diagolon converts. Yet, Diagolon was not a factor in the men’s trial. The Crown called no witnesses from CAHN to ‘explain’ how these men were driven by Diagolon’s so-called “extremist accelerationist ideology” to carry out any type of conspiratorial plan. One would think the Fifth Estate would mention this, but then it couldn’t rely on Phillips to push CAHN’s delusions about Diagolon calling the men, “True believers,” adding that, “no amount of time in jail is going to change that.” He not only goes after them, but their supporters too. “They can’t think of themselves as criminals and neither can their supporters… who think they are just doing what they are doing to protect them.”

Sundberg also doesn’t think this case is the end of such ‘movements’, and maintains that, “There needs to be more preparation because this isn’t going to be the last time.” The last time for what he doesn’t seem to clarify.

What’s the Real ‘Conspiracy in Coutts’?

So one has to ask, what is the real “Conspiracy in Coutts”? Does the Fifth Estate still expect anyone to believe that two men — not four — which certainly weakens the conspiracy narrative — were found out to have been devising a plot to kill an army of police and overthrow the government? And what happened to that sophisticated, agile, knowledgeable and capable organization — they belonged too? It didn’t appear to be Diagolon. Then there’s the fact that RCMP officers in briefing the news media on the morning of the arrests indicated there were other ‘unidentified suspects’ of the purported ‘criminal organization’ that the accused allegedly belonged to. The RCMP said there were continuing efforts to learn the identity of the ‘other’ suspects, but those other suspects were neither found nor arrested. No explanation was ever provided as to why this did not happen.

Which brings us back to the the Trudeau government’s obsession with finding a viable and tenable reason to invoke the Emergencies Act on a peaceful protest that had become a thorn in its side. Was this entire case in Coutts a monumentally gross intelligence and investigative failure on the part of the RCMP? Or rather, was it a case of Canada’s ‘independent’ federal police force being coerced, corrupted and co- opted by the Trudeau government to do its bidding by arresting four men, and using patches on a single vest that didn’t even belong to any of them to connect them to Diagolon. Then to portray Diagolon as an violent extremist organization based on singular assessments by CAHN which the RCMP itself didn’t think held water. Then to let the media run with CAHN’s claims and foment a frenzy over this dangerous plot to kill police, while the Trudeau government then invokes the Emergencies Act. Can things get any more conspiratorial than this?

Then CBC’s ‘esteemed’ Fifth Estate decides to produce a documentary it claims it has been working on for three years to try and connect all the dots and to make the case for a conspiracy that didn’t happen. It concocts its own version of events shore up a narrative that has been steadily falling apart — like the house of cards it was built on — since the day the Trudeau government invoked the Act.

Unanswered Questions and Loose Ends

But despite the Fifth Estate’s best efforts the dots simply don’t connect, nor do they dovetail with too many other remaining loose ends and unanswered questions that it either cannot or chose not to address.

Weapons Planted? — The Fifth Estate learned rumours had circulated accusing the RCMP of planting weapons during its raids. The source of the rumours was 65 year-old Joanne Person, a Coutts resident who had been very supportive the protesters, allowing Carbert and Lysak to park their trailers on her property and others to spend the night in her home — including some of the nine others arrested during the raids.

D’Souza is filmed paying a visit her to ask her about this rumour, but she shuts her door on him accusing the media of spreading “enough lies about her”. Here again viewers don’t get the whole story, because D’Souza doesn’t think it’s important to mention that Person’s own trailer was raided, and she was one of the nine other people — besides the four men — arrested by the RCMP that night. She was charged with mischief and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes and spent two nights in jail. The weapon in question, a single 22 rifle found in her closet. Some media carried Person’s accusations of the RCMP planting weapons, but the allegations were never proven. D’Souza also fails to mention that all charges against Person were dropped by the Crown in January of 2023.

Why Weren’t Police Warned if Such Serious Danger Existed? — The Fifth Estate also ignored admissions made by the RCMP in its own after action report on its response to the Freedom Convoy called Project Natterjack. That being that the RCMP on the ground in Coutts were not warned of the ‘imminent danger’ they faced from men belonging to an ‘armed and dangerous criminal group’ planning to murder them. The report stated: “Some officers at the scene of an Alberta blockade were unaware of threats to harm police until after the episode ended.” And that “some had only learned about the threats through media reporting.” It concluded: “This raises a number of safety concerns for members deployed to the front line.. . this issue must be addressed. …All front-line members must receive briefings prior to being deployed… including information about possible threats to life.” A situation was so dangerous it required the government to invoke the Emergencies Act, yet it wasn’t, so serious, or dangerous that senior RCMP leaders thought to ensure members on the ground were aware of a plot to kill cops, to kill them.

Mystery of the Famous Photo of the Cache of Weapons Seized — The RCMP released this photo when it announced the arrests at Coutts. The media ensured it was in every newspaper and on every news broadcast and every possible news website in the country. What is unusual about the photo is that it looked like it was staged to illustrate the seriousness of ‘plot to kill police’ that the RCMP had uncovered.

Yet, this photo was never presented to the jury as evidence at the trial of Carbert and Olienick, nor were any of the guns in the photo. And the RCMP has never made clear who the weapons and other paraphernalia belonged to. Did it all belong just to the two men on trial? Did some of it belong to the nine others who were arrested? We know the vest with the so-called Diagolon patches belonged to one of those nine — Evan Colenutt. The guns seized from Morin’s truck were not in the are not in the photo.

As it turned out, the photo was indeed staged, as he RCMP officer who help stage it was called to testify at the trial of Carbert and Olienick. He admitted under cross-examination that it was unusual for the RCMP to tamper with evidence that had been bagged and tagged as it was during the raids. He said, they were, however told to transport the items to a staging area and remove the bags and tags to stage the items for media photos and then re-bag and tag them. A very unusual procedure for such a high profile case — and we’ll just leave it at that.

The Grand Finale from the Fifth Estate

To mark the 50th Anniversary of the CBC’s flagship investigative journalism program, throughout 2025, the Fifth Estate, at the end of each of show features a brief “flashback'“ from one of its previous investigative endeavours. And just what does it feature for the closing of the ‘Conspiracy at Coutts’? None other than an exposé the Fifth Estate did in 1995 on the Heritage Front — Canada’s most famous or perhaps infamous Neo-Nazi White Supremacist movements.

Just like everything else the Fifth Estate presented in ‘Conspiracy in Coutts’, this appears to be more by design than coincidence. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

Part One of Taking Down CBC’s Fifth Estate Documentary 'Conspiracy in Coutts' recounted the plight of the four men who were arrested and accused of plotting to murder police following an RCMP operation carried out during the protest against COVID mandates in Coutts, Alberta in February of 2022. It detailed how they were denied bail and left to essentially rot in jail for two years** without being tried or convicted of the charges* they faced. Serving their time in Alberta remand centres, ill equipped to see to the needs of long term inmates, they endured horrible and often inhumane conditions as these facilities were also largely remiss in their basic ‘duty of care’ to these men.

* Charges were mischief over $5000, possession of weapons for a dangerous purpose and conspiracy to murder police (RCMP). Olienick was also charged with possession of a pipe bomb.

** Two of the men Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak were released one week short of having spent two years in the slammer following a plea deal wherein all original charges against them were dropped by the Crown. Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert spent two and a half years jailed in remand centres, before their trial in which a jury found them not guilty of the conspiracy charge but guilty of the other charges.

Tony Olienick, Chris Carbert, Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin as pictured in the Fifth Estate’s Conspiracy in Coutts.

As the documentary’s primary goal appeared to be to convince viewers they all should have been convicted of conspiring to kill cops, the Fifth Estate wilfully ignored their plight, despite the court having cleared them of that charge by the time the program was produced. This wasn’t revealed until the end of the program, because it would been difficult for CBC mount its ‘case’ against the guys if viewers knew at the outset the Crown prosecutor had failed to get a single conviction on the conspiracy charge. This — Part 2 of 3 — details just how the Fifth Estate built it’s own conspiracy case against the men with the use of conjecture, speculation, misrepresentations and complete fabrications — when no conspiracy existed.

The documentary’s reporter and commentator Steven D’Souza invited these three “experts’ along for the ride to provide their views and opinions to help spin CBC’s case against the men. It’s fair to say it is not difficult to ascertain their political leanings.

Dr. Temitope Oriola PhD, a professor of Criminology and Sociology at the University of Alberta. His primary areas of research encompass police use of force, insurgencies and terrorism. His focus is on Africa and such violent jihadist groups as Boko Haram not domestic ‘extremist’ movements.

Kurt Phillips is a Canadian Anti-Hate Network Board Member (CAHN), an organization that receives considerable funding from the Trudeau government and proudly declares it only investigates right wing extremism and thus does not investigate groups like ANTIFA, Black Lives Matter or the Pro-Palestinian/Hamas protesters. CAHN has labelled parents who protested against schools teaching gender ideology to their children as ‘far-right’. The Hate-Gate Affair: Unmasking Canada’s Hate Industry - prepared by Toronto Lawyer Caryma Sa’d and a former CAHN member who is well acquainted with Phillips, Elisa Hategan, who has considerable experience in researching right-extremism herself, was highly critical of CAHN’s members and its tactics which the report outlined.

“Inflated numbers. Dubious metrics. Smearing the competition. Anonymous “experts” who refuse to provide credentials or evidence to back up their expertise. Using others’ work without permission. False or unsubstantiated claims. Shady research tactics. Ignoring vicious harassment campaigns by supporters against critics and competitors. Backdoor influence from intelligence agencies. These are all accusations that have been levelled at CAHN. Quite the impressive tally for an organization only established in 2018. And yet, despite mounting criticism, both this country’s mainstream media and its law enforcement organizations continue to unquestioningly take for granted, what we consider questionable expertise.” (Sept. 2023)

Kelly Sundberg, a former police officer, is an Associate Professor of Criminal Justice at Mount Royal University in New Brunswick. He supports the Trudeau Liberal’s On-Line Harms Act, a law many legal experts agree seriously infringes on free speech, but Sundberg sees as way to prevent teens from being co opted by domestic online right wing extremist groups. [Professor Sundberg says tabling of the Online Harms Act on Feb. 26 is a good start to tackling the rapid spread of online extremist groups, which he says has been getting noticeably worse since 2021.]

From the outset these ‘experts’ promote a biased and troubling theme about the men, despite being well aware that they were never convicted of the conspiracy charge. Yet, they deemed the concerns and views they expressed during their interrogations with the RCMP after their arrests as extremist, delusional, irrational, unfounded, and of course, conspiratorial. Oriola uses the term ‘Christian Nationalists’ to describe some of their leanings. Sundberg, who is very much concerned about domestic right-wing extremists thinks that with “this on-line radicalization and extremism people lives could be at risk.” Philips describes them as having views that “society is going in the wrong direction… and they may ultimately seek ‘a violent solution”.

These ‘experts’, so steeped in their own ideologies, couldn’t grasp the possibility that these men had valid and justifiable concerns given the state of the country. They, like many Canadians, were disturbed with what they saw as government overreach into their lives as the ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ at the outset of the pandemic morphed into endless COVID mandates and and restrictions two years out. They found the growing infringement on people’s rights and freedoms through the enforcement of such mandates disquieting. Their fears were not unfounded given they had seen pastors jailed for holding church services and people arrested for skating on public outdoor rinks or not wearing masks. They had seen people lose their businesses, their jobs and in some cases their lives over the mandates. Many people were not in a good place in February of 2022 because they had been pushed too far, and some were pushing back. When the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act and sent an army of riot police into downtown Ottawa to crush the Freedom Convoy, beating and arresting many of the protesters, and freezing their bank accounts, such fears were more than confirmed. Yet these ‘experts’ disregarded the men’s trepidation with disdain and instead labelled them as radical fanatics which, coincidentally, fit perfectly with the Fifth Estate’s narrative and framing of the men.

The documentary opens with a montage of scenes from the Ottawa Freedom Convoy. D’Souza describes downtown Ottawa as ‘being under siege’ – narrating over scenes of protesters looking angry and defiant. He explains how the convoy’s protest against COVID mandates had sparked other similar ‘angry’ protests across the country. He then then zeroes in on Coutts to say that it was where the RCMP carried out its “most ‘serious’ operation” where it suspected a plot to murder police officers. And so, we are off to the races.

A brief video clip of Public Safety Minister Minister Marco Mendicino follows sombrely telling reporters what the RCMP in Coutts had ‘uncovered’ —“The dangerous criminal activity was real and it was organized.” With that quote came the famous RCMP photo* carefully displaying the weaponry that was ‘seized’ at Coutts.

*This famous and highly damning photo was published by virtually every Canadian media outlet, before the men ever went to trial, yet it was never entered as evidence at the trial of Olienick and Carbert, thus it was never shown to the jury. Nor was it ever clearly explained who owned all the weapons and other paraphernalia — and the Fifth Estate sheds no further light on it either.

Then two of the ‘experts’ chime in. Oriola makes the inflammatory comment — “They (the men) had agents of the state (police) in their cross-hairs.” The men were not convicted of conspiring to kill police — so there were no ‘agents of the state’ in their cross-hairs. D’Souza follows up Oriola’s assertion asking: “What happens when people come out from behind their screens and act? “ CAHN guru Kurt Phillips, answers — “There is a danger of someone committing an ‘awful’ act,” Scenes of three of the men in interrogation rooms follows to give viewers a taste of what is to come. Will they reveal the ‘awful acts’ they were planning? So the stage is set.

According to D’Souza, The Fifth Estate had been ‘investigating’ this story for three years, but it could not publish ‘key evidence’ in order to protect the men’s right to a fair trial. With the trial now over, he says such evidence can now be shown. The CBC is being disingenuous with this statement, because the CBC published numerous stories about allegations against the men and photos of this ‘key evidence’ including the RCMP photo of the weapons seized shortly after they were arrested, which would have tainted any potential juror.

The former cop and criminology ‘expert’ Kelly Sundberg is introduced to ‘walk them through the RCMP investigation and how they identified the four men’. He says it’s clear the RCMP knew, from the intelligence, something was ‘amiss’, but doesn’t detail what intelligence made that clear, except to say police were concerned ‘things could get out of control’. Thus, it was a ‘prudent’ step, for them to have female undercover police (UCP) infiltrate the protest to ‘understand what the protest leaders’ were planning.

He thought it would take ‘highly skilled officers’ to infiltrate the such a ‘tight knit community’. But just how ‘tight knit’ was that community? Protesters had come from across Alberta, some knew each other, others were strangers and the arrival of newcomers in support of the cause was welcomed. So for Sundberg describe the protest so ‘tight knit’ as to be wary of a few attractive young women coming onto the scene is a bit of a reach.

Those UPCs recounted their conversations with Olienick and Carbert when they testified at their trial. D’Souza, references their testimonies as text of trial transcripts is superimposed on the TV screen. But, he isn’t clear about how those conversations were recorded — because they were not captured on tape, but were based only on the women’s notes and memories. When asked, they all admitted in their testimonies, they were never ‘wired’ throughout their ‘investigation’. Given this, how much of what they wrote may have been embellished to fit a pre-conceived notion of what they had been sent into the protest to uncover? They spent the bulk of their time talking to Olienick, a single guy who might have been prone to some embellishing himself, to impress these attractive gals, who seemed interested in him and supportive of the protest.

The documentary goes on to ‘introduce’ all four men based on the UCP’s testimonies. They began their investigation in Smugglers Saloon, ‘the headquarters’ where protesters often gathered to socialize. Someone who is not identified tells them Olienick is ‘the leader’, the leader of what is not clear, but they just run with it and seek out and befriend him. He tells them he is performing ‘security’ for the protest, along with Chris Lysak. Olienick then introduces them to Chris Carbert but his role is, if he has one, is not mentioned. The UPC’s do not meet, Jerry Morin. Instead the he is brought onto the scene in the documentary with a brief video of him declaring, “There’s no excuses, this is war,” — the word war seeming to be seen as some type of violent incitement when it is nothing more than a metaphor — a call for more people to come to Coutts in a show of solidarity. To make him appear more militant D’Souza notes that he was arrested at an anti-mask rally in Calgary in 2020, but doesn’t mention he was released without charge. D’Souza also doesn’t mention that Morin was only at the protest a few days because he was away working in Vancouver most of the time. Yet, the Fifth Estate claims he met Carbert and Lysak a few months earlier. The implication is made that all the men knew each other well, however, that was not the case.

Jacelyn Martin, Morin’s wife, testified at the trial of Carbert and Olienick and was clear that Morin had never met Carbert or Lysak, nor did he ever meet with the UCPs. Neither was Morin ever involved in a plan to meet Carbert or Olienick at train tracks to deliver ‘something’ in a hockey bag as is implied in the UPC’s testimony. Their evidence about this incident is weak. The transcripts state it was only an assumption that “Jerry was coming with a package”, a “hockey bag”, according to Olienick. Their notes indicate they only ‘suspected’ a 'cache of weapons’ but had no evidence to confirm their suspicions. It is not clear if they ever saw Morin at all.

This raises the question that, if the UCP’s suspected this, why wouldn’t they have waited for the transaction to occur and then seized the bag and arrested the men on the spot. If the bag was found to have contained weapons — surely they would have had grounds given it presented an ‘imminent threat’. But instead these ‘highly trained’ UCPs who, testified that they had worked on many dangerous undercover operations, were ordered by their ‘handlers’ to leave the site for their own safety. Additionally the mysterious hockey bag and its contents were never presented as evidence at the trial. But, according to the UPC’s ‘notes’ — a unanimous person told them they feared the protest had become ‘a breeding ground for extremists’.

This was enough for the RCMP to get an imminent danger wire tape to monitor the men’s communications. Sundburg describes this as ‘very serious’ as such wire taps are usually reserved for terrorist plots’ — an interesting choice of words. Yet, the results of these wire taps fell short of any type of imminent threats of violence, much less conspiracy to murder, despite CBC’s efforts to, again, make it seem so. They did highlight Olienick referring to Justin Trudeau as a ‘terrorist’. To what end? Is it a crime for someone to express what they think anyone, even the Prime Minister in what is supposed to be private conversation?

The documentary continues with video of the protest site taken by Olienick as he notes the sudden increase in police presence at the protest — yet he does not seem overly alarmed by it or worried for his own safety. He captures more video of other protesters also expressing concern about the presence of heavily armed police. Unbeknownst to Olienick, this is the lead up to the raids and the arrests of the men — including him. Lysak was arrested first, outside Smugglers Saloon, where he is accused of threatening police — a charge that was later dropped.

D’Souza reports that Tony was then arrested while he was video taping outside Smugglers. D’Souza continues, telling viewers that the court provided The Fifth Estate with exclusive footage of the RCMP raids "so we can show you first hand what happened when police raided a series of trailers just blocks from Smugglers.” He makes a valiant effort to build up the suspense, as the video plays with the RCMP exchanging radio communications gearing up for the ‘raid’ and deploying snipers as they order all occupants of the trailers to come out with their hands up.

The drama falls flat as Carbert, the only occupant of one trailer is arrested without incident, apparently rousted from his sleep. But, CBC doesn’t show you everything that happened, because also arrested in that raid was a 65 year old grandmother, Joanne Person, whose house trailer was also on that property — other protesters that she had offered beds in her home for the night were also arrested. She was charged with mischief and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes and jailed for two nights. Those charges against her have since been withdrawn.

D’Souza continues on, saying Morin was still ‘at large’, but is he then arrested ‘on his way to Coutts.’ The details D’Souza provides of Morin’s arrest can only be characterized as a complete fabrication. Morin was actually on his way to Priddis* to do an electrical job when he was ambushed, beaten and arrested by a RCMP SWAT Team on the highway.

*The town of Priddis is north of Coutts, Morin would have been travelling in the opposite direction from Coutts when he was arrested.

The guns seized, that D’Souza implied he was bringing to Coutts, were his own that he carries with him regularly to shoot gophers and coyotes and they were all legally registered and properly stored in his truck. But CBC makes every effort to make the guns look sinister and carelessly stored.

Then D’Souza proclaims that all four men are arrested — and charged with conspiracy to murder police — without a single shot fired! Might that be because they never intended to fire any shots?

The arrests are followed by Mendicino’s full announcement — that the incident at Coutts was serious enough for the government to invoke the Emergencies Act

"The dangerous criminal activity occurring away from the TV cameras and social-media posts was real and and it was organized. It could have been deadly for citizens, protesters and officers. We need to be clear-eyed about the seriousness of these incidents and indeed, several of the individuals* at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right, extreme organization with leaders who are in Ottawa.We’re talking about a group that is organized, agile, knowledgeable and driven by an extremist ideology where might makes right. Which is completely contrary to our democratic values.”

*The report mentions very briefly that nine others were also arrested in this ‘extensive RCMP operation’. Yet, CBC’s own initial reporting on the Coutts arrests implied they were all part of this ‘criminal organization’ that Mendicino references — but the entire report makes no further mention of their connection, if any, to the four men. Four of the nine have since had the charges against them dropped or stayed, including Joann Person, and the other four had yet to be tried at the time of the Fifth Estate broadcast.

Now under arrest and charged with ‘conspiracy to murder police’, the next section of the documentary delves further into the so-called ‘conspiracy’ that never was. Interviews with their ‘experts’ are also featured as discussions about extremist militia groups abound. The Fifth Estate airs ‘never before seen videos’ of the police interrogation of three of the four men and details how the RCMP conducts further searches to gather more evidence to provide what it hopes is a winning case to the Crown. Those details and a dissection of those interrogations will be the subject of Part 3 — on Taking Down the CBC Fifth Estate’s Conspiracy in Coutts.

I have wanted to do a review of the CBC Fifth Estate’s ‘documentary’ on the Coutts Four since it first aired in November of last year. It has, however, been difficult to watch without having my head explode. So, I allowed myself some time to try to be a bit more detached as I write my piece – but given the road the CBC took, I do say, it isn’t easy. As this review is quite lengthy, I have decided to present it in two parts. Part 1 focuses on the monumental omission by the Fifth Estate of what these men endured while awaiting their trial or their dispensation of their charges.

In February of 2022 the border town of Coutts, Alberta became the site of a Canada-US border blockade as hundreds and hundreds of Albertans gathered to protest government imposed COVID mandates and restrictions. The protest sprang from the Freedom Convoy that had travelled to Ottawa in that same month to protest those same mandates and restrictions.

At the Coutts protest four male protesters were arrested* following a series of raids conducted by the RCMP in that town on February 13-14, 2022. The four, who were initially charged with mischief over $5000 and possessing weapons for a dangerous purpose, were eventually charged with the serious crime of ‘conspiracy to murder police’. And just by happenstance, that charge, and the so-called ‘conspiracy plot’ that arose from it, became the catalyst for the Trudeau government to invoke the Emergencies Act to crush the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa in mid February of 2022. The Fifth Estate’s documentary titled: “Conspiracy in Coutts” that aired on CBC in November of 2024, was was supposed to be an ‘in-depth’ look into the situation leading up to the arrests of these four men – who came to be known as the ‘Coutts Four’ — unfortunately it was anything but.

*Nine others were arrested as part of the RCMP operation and charged with mischief and possession of a weapon for dangerous purpose — but not the conspiracy charge. It was, however implied, in media reports that these nine others were connected to the ‘conspiracy’.

But before we get into the documentary, a history of the Coutts Four is necessary. Something the Fifth Estate didn’t seem to think was relevant to their report.

The Coutts Four - Chris Carbert, Tony Olienick, Jerry Morin, and Chris Lysak.

Following their arrests the men were repeatedly denied bail for what could be described as questionable reasons, other than the supposed ‘seriousness’ of the ‘conspiracy to murder police’ charge. Thus, they spent some two years in remand custody, awaiting their court date, before they were ever tried or convicted on any of the charges they faced As they awaited a trial date, that was months away, they remained in Alberta remand centres* — poorly equipped facilities where, due to overcrowding, the men were often forced to share quarters with violent repeat offenders and mentally deranged and drug addicted inmates who were often going through withdrawal symptoms or having hallucinations.

*Remand centres in Calgary, Lethbridge and Medicine Hat

With lights in the cells remaining on day and night, and bed shortages that found inmates crashing or passing out on the floor, sleep for the men, was difficult to say the least. These were traumatic experiences for men with virtually no criminal records and who had never so much as seen the inside of a jail cell. Given that remand centres are meant to hold prisoners for a short time until they are released on bail, the medical or mental health services available to the men were minimal to the point of being non-existent. In fact, they often suffered in pain or discomfort for long periods awaiting medical attention and were regularly denied needed medical treatments and medications that had been prescribed for them. With no recreational or exercise programs or facilities available to them, most of their time was spent locked in windowless cells. They rarely got a chance to see outside, let alone get outside for fresh air. Even the food was substandard as meals were stale, served cold or were simply unpalatable — health related dietary requirements were also ignored. As their mental and physical health deteriorated due to the conditions of their incarceration, the men also suffered the additional stress of facing financial ruin given the astronomical legal fees required to fund their defence in court proceedings that needlessly dragged for over two years.

Additionally two of the men — Morin and Olienick — were subjected to extended periods of solitary confinement – or what the remand centres like to call — administrative segregation. In this case it was due to a segregation order, which meant the men couldn’t locked up with each other so to speak. Given that Olienick and Morin where not jailed at the Lethbridge Correctional facilities, whenever they were transported Lethbridge for court proceedings at the town’s courthouse they had to be separated from their co-accused. Given the limited facilities at the Lethbridge facility , they often spent all their time in solitary cells as their court proceedings often carried on for days or even weeks.

Then, suddenly, after enduring all of these mental and physical hardships for two long years – all the original charges were suddenly dropped against two of the men in February of 2024. Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak were released from custody after pleading guilty to far lesser charges. They were free men, after spending two years behind bars for crimes on which they were never convicted. Instead a plea deal had been struck wherein both men pleaded guilty to much lesser charges. Lysak pleaded guilty to a charge of improper transportation of a firearm and Morin pleaded to a very questionable charge of trafficking a firearm. Both were ‘sentenced’ to ‘time served’ which amounted to the two* years they’d spent in custody, which is a travesty of justice in itself, because the normal penalty for both of the crimes they pleaded guilty to would have likely been a fine or probation.

*Their sentence was actually the equivalent of three and a half years given that time spent is remand is the credited at 1.5 days for every day served so their ‘time served’ actually amounted to 3.5 five years.

Additionally, Morin, after having spent two years in the guns and gangs unit of the Calgary Remand Centre was suffering extreme mental duress and may have been coerced to sign his plea deal — admitting to something he had not done. This factor was given further credence during the trial of the other two men, when the Crown attempted to enter Morin’s plea deal as evidence to support his case and the judge denied it.

The other two men - Carbert and Olienick remained in custody and eventually went to trial and in the fall of 2024, a jury found them not guilty of conspiracy to murder police, but guilty of the mischief and weapons possession charges. Olienick was also found guilty of possession of a pipe bomb*.They are currently serving prison terms of six and half years at the Drumheller Medium Security correctional facility.

*Part 2 will provide further details of the pipe bomb charge.

One would think that given the injustices these men suffered – doing some two years of very hard time for a crime they had yet to be convicted of – the Fifth Estate might have investigated how this could have happened to them. How could four men, with no criminal records, be so severely punished for a crime on which they were all ultimately exonerated — “conspiracy to kill police”. A crime the justice system deemed they had not committed.

As CBC’s epitome of investigative journalism, the Fifth Estate might have wanted to expose the terrible hardships and treatment they endured while in custody in ill equipped and, some might say, remand centres that were remiss in their duty of care. It might have questioned why they were denied bail, or why they were not given proper medical care and medications, and why two of them were subjected to prolonged periods of solitary confinement. Something that is considered a form of torture in many parts of the world.

Many of the men’s supporters, a group which grew considerably over the two years of their incarceration, considered them political prisoners, given that their arrests were connected to the government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, which has since been declared unconstitutional by a federal court. Yet, the Fifth Estate had no interest in delving into this or any of these other issues or injustices. Instead, it would seem, it was far more interested in convincing its viewers that all four men should have actually been convicted of the conspiracy to murder charge.

Even the title of the report — ‘Conspiracy at Coutts’ — clearly reveals the Fifth Estate’s bias. It is a false and misleading premise, because that was no ‘conspiracy at Coutts’. How could there have been any such ‘conspiracy’ to kill police when all four of the men were ultimately cleared of the conspiracy charge?

The Fifth Estate’s claim that it had been ‘investigating’ the story for ‘almost three years' is dubious at best. Because, in those three years, outside of the men’s early remand hearings, where yet to be proven ‘evidence’ of their guilt was presented, and on which CBC did report — CBC only attended some proceedings via Webex. Yet, in their reporting, they never raised questions as to why men, who had good standing in their communities, and held down jobs or owned businesses, were being held in custody. It was a question worth asking given that accused murderers and dangerous repeat offenders are regularly get bail under the Trudeau government’s catch and release bail laws. Neither did the Fifth Estate look into reports of the harsh conditions the men endured in the remand centres when complaints on their behalf were registered with the Alberta Health Service — despite apparently investigating the matter for three years!

The Fifth Estate never questioned why pre-trial hearings for these men dragged on for over a year – particularly given that this was often due to late disclosures of evidence or refusals to disclose evidence to the defence — by the Crown. It never attempted to interview the men’s lawyers to get any perspective on the case – something that happens quite regularly in high profile trials. For example, CBC has been a regular presence at the trial of the Freedom Convoy ‘leaders’ Tamara Lich and Chris Barber in Ottawa, and interviewed their lawyers quite regularly.

CBC relied on reports from a lone Canadian Press reporter, Bill Graveland during the trial of Carbert and Olienick. It cited publication bans on pre-trial court proceedings as its reason for not ‘reporting’ on the case earlier. Yet, as noted in the previous three paragraphs there are many aspects of the case they could have been investigating but obviously didn’t. This includes asking questions as why they were denied bail or why they were not given proper medical care and medications, and why two of them were subjected to prolonged periods of solitary confinement. And they certainly could have interviewed their many supporters, or their attorneys. So it is really difficult to figure our what type of investigation into this case The Fifth Estate was conducting other than seemingly to once again, convict these men of the conspiracy charge, in the court of public opinion — when they had not been convicted of it in a court of law.

The Fifth Estate’s focus in the documentary is, as I said, attempting to imply the men should have been found guilty of the conspiracy charge — which will be outlined in Part 2 of my report. Stay tuned, as they say.

Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert, the two men known as the Coutts Two, now face a sentence of six and a half years in prison after being convicted on charges of mischief over $5000, and possession of weapons for a dangerous purpose. A jury found them guilty of both offences in early August of this year, while acquitting them on the very serious charge of conspiracy to murder police.

Given that they were exonerated on the conspiracy charge, they, and their supporters hoped their sentence would be held to the 940 days they had already served in remand custody where they have been since they were arrested in Coutts, Alberta, in February of 2022, during the border blockade protests against government COVID mandates. While the presiding judge, David Labrenz, in delivering their sentence in a Lethbridge, Alberta courtroom on September 9, did credit them some four years for ‘time served’ – as extra credit* is often accorded prisoners for their time spent in remand while awaiting trial – this still means the men will spend at least another two years behind bars, likely in a federal prison. 

*In most cases prisoners are credited 1.5 days in their sentences, for each day spent in remand due to the hardships faced in remand centres that lack most of the facilities with which prisons are equipped to address prisoners’ needs.

Given the severity of their sentence many supporters were of the opinion that Judge Labrenz had still taken into account elements of the conspiracy charge despite that acquittal. For example he said he believed that the pair had brought guns to the protest* with the intention of having a ‘shoot-out’ with police. “Both armed themselves for the purpose of using those weapons against police,” adding that, “they even attempted to smuggle more guns.” He was, however, “not sure if the plan was successful?!”

*To clarify — the men never brought a gun onto the actual site of the protest. The guns that were seized were found in the trailer belonging to Carbert that had been parked on the property of a resident of Coutts, who had given him permission to park there.

Those statements by the judge do seem to allude more to the conspiracy charge than the offence of being in possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, given that the judge seems to have unilaterally decided that the dangerous purpose was definitively to shoot police. This seems to undermine the jury’s verdict. They found the men not guilty of the conspiracy, which would indicate that they did not find the testimonies of the three female RCMP undercover officers (UCO) who recounted their conversations with the men about any type of conspiracy, particularly convincing. This is likely due to the fact that for some unknown reason the UCOs did not wear wires when they infiltrated the protest and therefore they had no tapes of ‘said’ conversations with the men to back them up their testimonies.

Yet, Judge Labrenz seems to have given considerable weight to their testimonies. The only distinguishable difference Labrenz seemed to make on the subject of conspiracy was that, rather than viewing the men as ‘co-conspirators’ as the Crown had alleged, he saw them as acting independently. The being that each man ‘individually determined’ to enact the same plan. "I consider it a last-ditch effort to stand against the government, a self-imposed responsibility to continue the blockade until the government heard their demands." said Labrenz.

From this he concluded that their activities presented a “credible threat to police and the public.” While Labrenz’s words are not the same, they do bear some similarity to the words Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino used when he was referring to the ‘situation’ at Coutts, describing it as dangerous criminal activity that, “could have been deadly for citizens, protesters and officers.” And, it was this ‘situation’ at Coutts, and the arrest of these men, that became the catalyst for the Trudeau government to invoke the Emergencies Act, which imposed Martial Law across the country and brought an end to the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa. 

Then there is this statement that he made in delivering the sentence, it seemed an attempt to address his concern that some might think his sentence did still factor in the conspiracy charge. "I am not sentencing the offenders for uncharged terrorism offences or the conspiracy to commit murder charges. If they were convicted of these offences, they would have been sentenced to a penitentiary for double digits." Why did he mention ‘uncharged terrorism offences’ – what does that even mean? Was this something considered at the time of their arrests; even if it was, why mention it now?

Labrenz, in passing sentence, said both men bore a high degree of moral culpability. This is not simply a general description of their actions. Rather, in legal parlance it is a measurement of the degree of moral blameworthiness the judge is placing on the individuals on whom he is passing sentence. Ergo – the higher the degree of moral culpability  – the  longer the sentence. It is based on the principle that those causing harm intentionally should be punished more severely than those causing harm unintentionally. And according to the judge, "They knew what they were doing was illegal, but they did not care because they believed they had a worthy cause." 

So, it would appear, from Labrenz’s perspective he did think they intentionally ‘planned’ to cause harm – again that conspiracy element seems to rear its head again — yet they did not physically harm anyone. The only ‘harm’, it would seem, was their participating in a protest that blockaded the border, but according to the judge, “They were prepared to do more than blocking (the highway) both armed themselves for the purpose of use against police.” There’s that conspiracy factor creeping in again.

With regard to the border blockade from which the mischief charge stemmed — Labrenz did not consider the authorities provided by the men’s defence lawyers to mitigate sentencing he because felt the gravity of the situation differed from the precedents the defence had put forward. This, according to the judge, was due to the decision taken to block an international highway with political motivations to force a change in government policy.

“The law does not allow people to take the law into their own hands. There's no shortage of people who believe that their cause is just, with impatience for democratic processes ...however section 718 of the code states the fundamental purpose of sentencing is to protect society,"

Labrenz described the protest as political in nature that resulted in economic harm, designed to force political change. Yet, by contrast, the many people who participated in the border blockade protest at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, at the same time, have since had their mischief charges dropped or reduced, while others paid restitution in the form of making cash donations the charities. Those protesters had also blocked what was actually a much more important border in terms of causing economic damage in order to ‘force political change.’

Labrenz also considered case law with respect to the sentencing of Pastor Artur Pawlowski for preaching a sermon to the Coutts protesters, and of James Sowery, who was accused trying to run down a police officer with his truck at a protest check point, both of which cited the men’s political motivations. It should be noted that while both the pastor and Sowery were found guilty and sentenced, the verdicts in both cases are currently under appeal. Nevertheless, Judge Labrenz said he was delivering a “deterrent  sentence, to signal, not just to the defendants, but to everyone else, that putting police officers and the public in jeopardy would not be tolerated.”

So, the judge who told the jury not to consider arguments put forward by Olienick’s lawyer about political motivations on the part of the Crown, the police and the government with respect to the trial is now talking about political motivations on the part of the defendants and the protest as a whole.

In a nutshell these are the reasons, and the cases Judge Labrenz gave, plus more that is just to complex to get into here, that led him to determine that Carbert and Olienick still needed to serve more time behind bars than they already had.

Now just to give this sentencing a new perspective — let’s look at another convoy case, where a guilty party served much less time, in fact, no time all. That would be the case of David Zegarac. He is the Antifa member and punk rocker who, with his jeep, rammed into and injured four Freedom Convoy protesters in Winnipeg and left the scene of the accident back in February of 2022. One man was sent to hospital with head and arm injuries, while the others incurred minor injuries and were no doubt pretty shaken up by the experience. So this was a case where the defendant did harm someone, and intentionally — it would seem.

Yet, at his trial in 2023, Zegarac was only sentenced to two years of house arrest after pleading he guilty to “two counts of dangerous operation of a motor vehicle causing bodily harm and one count of failing to stop at the scene of an accident causing bodily harm.” It should be further noted that when police finally arrested him they had to subdue him with a taser, but he was not charged with resisting arrest. Zegarac was also granted bail* until his trial and sentencing. Meanwhile, Carbert and Olienick didn’t physically injure anyone, nor did they resist arrest when they were apprehended by police.

*While Zergarac was out on bail he found himself in trouble with police again for a case involving child pornography. In October of 2022, months before his sentencing on the previous crime, he was charged with possession of child pornography, luring a child under 18, and selling child pornography and resisting a police officer. This final charge was due to the fact that police, again, had to use a taser to subdue an extremely uncooperative Zerarac. The outcome of these charges are unknown. 

I only mention Zegerac’s case because of his connection to the convoy, but it is small potatoes compared sentences that have been handed down by judges to people who can only be described as having committed the most heinous crimes against the most vulnerable and helpless members of our society – children. And despite the excuses or mitigating circumstances some of the guilty parties have used to explain their actions, their moral culpability is clear in terms of intentionally causing harm, meaning the punishment should be severe — yet it was not. Now legal experts may say I am comparing apples to oranges, but the court of public opinion might not quite see it that way. You be the judge, if you can stomach it.

Let’s start with 6.5 years, it seems appropriate, given that is the sentence handed to Olienick and Carbert. It is the same sentence given to a Windsor man (name withheld to protect the identity of surviving child), in 2021, for killing one of his seven-week old twin sons. The crying of the babies, while his wife was making dinner, upset him so much he that he physically attacked and shook both infants so violently that one died of brain injuries, while the other managed to survive ‘only’ suffering facial injuries. The original murder charge was reduced to manslaughter. He actually received six years on the manslaughter charge. The additional six months was for injuring, I repeat the seven-week old baby he didn’t manage to kill.

Then there is the eight year sentence handed to Sherman Whitford for beating 16-month-old baby - Veronica Poitras – to death while her mother was out buying groceries. What triggered his attack on the child he never said, but her autopsy revealed a shattered skeleton with three skull fractures. As Whitford was of Indigenous heritage, the eight-year sentence was considered ‘particularly harsh’, but the judge ruled that the crime was so heinous it ‘must be denounced.’ 

Or how about this ten year sentence that two foster parents received in June of 2023, for the torture, serial beating and starvation of an 11 boy and his eight-year-old sister in their ‘care’. They routinely beat them with two-by-fours, restrained them with zip ties, forced them to eat their own faeces and vomit, and starved them to the point that both children resembled Holocaust victims. To add to this depravity they videotaped their actions. The boy ultimately died as the result of the beatings. These monster’s, whose names weren’t released in order to protect the identity of the surviving child, plead guilty to aggravated assault and manslaughter. I use this ten year sentence as an example to remind readers that the Crown was seeking a nine year sentence for Olienick and Carbert on the charges of mischief and weapons possession. 

Here’s another 9 and a half year sentence that was handed to Tyriq Kootenay, for viciously beating his six-month old daughter, Tanayah, to death. The judge in passing the sentence said it was difficult to imagine a more egregious circumstance in which a human being could die. Her autopsy revealed numerous blunt force injuries, contusions and abrasions to her face, head, neck and torso. She had a fractured skull, her arms and ribs were broken and there was also a large bite on her back. Police found Tanayah’s battered body stuffed in a suitcase.

And this all brings me back to the question in my headline - does the punishment fit the crime? The biggest problem I have in asking that question, is what crime is being punished? Because many of the comments made by Judge Labrenz in outlining his reasons for the length of the sentence seem to imply he still believed the men were guilty of some form of ‘conspiracy’ to kill police. Words and phrases like they intended to have a “shoot-out with police”. But rather than accusing them of conspiring together, he views them as acting independently. Yet, he then accuses ‘them’ of attempting to smuggle more guns into the protest, but didn’t appear that ‘their’ plan had been successful.

Then comes that phrase that their activities presented a “credible threat to police and the public.” I likened it to the words used by Public Safety Minister Mendicino hours before the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act… he described ‘dangerous criminal activity’ in Coutts “that could have been deadly for citizens, protesters and officers.” Labrenz’s words are not as alarming as Mendicino’s — who is, after all a politician given to the use of hyperbole, nevertheless both convey the same message — a danger to the public and police.

However, when a jury found both men not guilty of the ‘conspiracy to murder police’ this August, that ‘threat’ to police and the public for matter, should, from a legal perspective, was considerably diminished, thus removing a key element of the Trudeau government’s reason for invoking the Emergencies Act. But the judge seemed to inject the ‘murder police element’ back into the equation in his sentencing of the men in using words such as ‘intent to harm’ and ‘moral culpability’ to assert as he clearly stated: “They were prepared to do more than blocking (the highway) both armed themselves for the purpose of use against police.”

In one of my articles on this subject I compared the Liberal government’s serendipitous subterfuge regarding its motives for invoking the Emergencies Act to crush the Freedom Convoy to a house of cards teetering on the brink of collapse. I said the removal of any key card, could bring the whole house down. One of those cards was the ruling be Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley that the use of the Act was unconstitutional and illegal. Another was the exposing the ‘conspiracy to kill police’ charge against the Coutts men as a false flag intentionally meant to give the Trudeau government the reason it needed to invoke the Act. A jury removed that card in August, but it would appear Judge Labrenz, in the tone and tenor of his sentence and the punishments he imposed on the men, just put it back. How ironic for a judge who warned the defence lawyers and the jury to keep politics out of the case.

After spending over two years — some 900 days in custody — though they had not yet been convicted of any crime, the remaining members of the Coutts Four, the Coutts Two – Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick – were finally exonerated and vindicated. On August 2, 2024, a jury in Lethbridge, Alberta, rendered its verdict finding both men – NOT GUILTY of conspiracy to commit murder of police (RCMP). For what should have been a major news story, for a major trial that has been almost three years in the making there were few members of the mainstream media there to hear it.

Yet, this verdict was not just a vindication these men and a condemnation of the hell they were put through for over two years, it lays further to waste Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s increasingly flimsy justification for invoking the Emergencies Act on the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. The Trudeau government maintained that it was the arrests of these men and two others, at the Coutts border blockade protest*, on this serious charge of conspiracy to kill police, that was the catalyst for invoking the Act. A move that gave the government unlimited powers to unleash riot police to violently crush a peaceful protest and further punish many protest participants by freezing their bank accounts. Perhaps that is why so few of the mainstream media, who are financially propped up by the Trudeau regime through more than generous subsidies, were not there to hear it.

*Coutts Border Blockade protest was an offshoot on the Freedom Convoy protest. Both were protesting the draconian COVID 19 mandates and restrictions imposed by governments in February of 2022.

This acquittal calls the Trudeau government’s justification for invoking the Act into even further question given that a Federal Court, earlier this year, ruled that Trudeau’s use of the Act was unjustified, illegal and unconstitutional.

So it should come as no surprise that, just as the Trudeau government announced it would be appeal that Federal Court ruling less than 20 minutes after it received the decision, the Crown prosecutor on the Coutts case, less than 20 days following the the jury’s decision to acquit these men, has indicated it will appeal the jury’s not guilty verdict. It does leave one to wonder if this move is due to the fact that a not guilty verdict completely undercuts the Trudeau government’s pretext for invoking the Act.

Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick not guilty of conspiracy to murder police.

Despite its political ramifications, the verdict, while extinguishing the possibility of both men facing life in prison, is bittersweet, not only because of the pending appeal, but also because they were still found guilty of mischief over $5000 and possession of weapons for dangerous purposes, and for Olienick, illegal possession of explosives.

While supporters had hoped that sentencing for those convictions would be the time served* in remand and that Olienick and Carbert will soon be free at last, that hope too, was short lived, as the Crown sought and received court time for a lengthy bail hearing, making it clear that time served would not be enough to satisfy the state’s need to further punish these men—thus both men still remain behind bars. So again, the hope that they would soon be able to put a long and very painful ordeal behind them and work to put their lives back together has once again been snuffed out, along with the two years of their lives that they will never get back.

*In recognition of the harsher conditions prisoners face in remand centres, one day in custody in a remand centre for sentencing purposed counts for 1.5 days. If further harsh treatments can be proven further time may be equated into ‘time served’.

This Crown Attorney, Stephen Johnston, just can’t seem to come to terms with the fact that despite his monumental efforts to convince the jury of his absurd tale that Carbert and Olinick were part of some nefarious group involved in a plot to overthrow the government and kill cops, they just didn’t buy it.

Nor did the jury find the testimonies of a trio of female undercover RCMP officers who took the stand to prop up this absurdity to be trustworthy. Perhaps because the testimonies from these undercover cops who had infiltrated the protest were based simply on their personal recollections rather than hard evidence. Why is that? Because, by their own admission, these undercover cops, who on any other assignment would wear wires to collect such evidence, were not equipped with wires while infiltrating the protest. Thus they had no recorded evidence of the conversations they had with the men. On top of that they were not able to explain why they weren’t wired. So, essentially their testimonies amounted to nothing more than hearsay.

The jury also did not believe Johnston’s contention that these two men were somehow planning to use the Coutts protest as a ‘launch pad’ to murder the veritable army of RCMP officers that descended on the protest site in early February. And descend they did as Daryl Yorgason a defence witness had who attended the protest told the Lethbridge court. He said that the police presence at the blockade was so overwhelming and intimidating he decided to leave. "I observed helicopters and drones. It looked like a scene out of a movie — a full military program coming at me. On foot, there was probably 30 or 40 RCMP in full riot gear."

As was also pointed out by their lawyers in their final arguments, the two men hardly knew each other, let alone somehow joined forces and conspired to bring about some kind of revolution that involved killing police and toppling the government. In reality it could hardly even be called a conspiracy, because the same Crown Attorney, Johnston, had dropped the conspiracy charges against their alleged co-conspirators — Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak — some four months back. They were released from custody after spending just a week shy of two years in remand custody. Charges of mischief over $5000 and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes were also dropped. Instead the men plead guilty to minor gun related charges that were not even part of the original indictment and which would have meant a fine or probation, but certainly not the two years they spent in remand custody.

Beyond punching serious holes in the Trudeau government’s contention that the Coutts ‘situation’ was the basis for its use of the Emergencies Act the list of questions, quandries and conundrums in this farcical series of unfortunate events is a long one and if the appeal proceeds the list can only get longer. With the overriding theme of a gross miscarriage of justice, areas that require examination and investigation include the question of media complicity and bias in the nature of reporting on the case — possible police and government corruption, coercion and incompetence — allegations of prosecutorial misconduct — and the very real abuse of authority and power by both the police, and the corrections and justice system. Now with the prospect of a potential appeal of this case, and therefore the possibility of a new trial the chances that any of these questions will ever be answered in the coming months or even years remains a question in itself. And this gives rise to another issue and question… is justice delayed justice denied, because this case is the poster child for this age old adage.

Still, the questions remain, and Canadians deserve, and perhaps someday will actually demand answers.

To begin with, why was there so much dishonesty and duplicity on the part of the media throughout this case, and continuing right up until now? 

Why is it that what should have been a major story about injustices carried out by the state on four men who were essentially assumed guilty on what were always questionable charges – based on equally questionable evidence – completely ignored, not just by mainstream media, but even independent media? This included True North Media, the Western Standard and Rebel News*; organizations who often claim they are there to tell the news the mainstream media won’t report on.

*Rebel News continuously gave credence to the possible guilt of the Coutts Four and the reasons for their denial of bail and until the release of Morin and Lysak following a plea deal. That development resulted in Ezra Levant, the face of Rebel News, reevaluating its previous position on the matter and questioning the state’s case against them. The case and trial has since been very well covered by Rebel News Reporter Robert Kraychik.

The bias, laziness and downright dishonesty and duplicity of the Canadian media in propping up the government’s, the Crown’s and the RCMP’s narrative on this entire matter has been both shocking and disgusting. It began with the arrests of the men and has continued throughout their trial right up to the not guilty verdict delivered by the jury. The media’s initial coverage assumed the guilt of the four men from the outset.

This type of reporting — in taking what the RCMP say as gospel — raises another question. Since when do media in this country take the RCMP at its word when it is investigating a controversial case and don’t question or scrutinize elements of its investigation, the veracity of its evidence or the very motives driving the investigation?

Yet this is what happened in the case of the Coutts Four. 

As I said this bias, laziness and dishonesty by the media continues to this very day — underscored by this piece titled ‘What the mixed verdict in the Coutts Freedom Convoy blockade trial really means’ written by apparently an award winning journalist Adrian Humphreys, published in the National Post on August 24, 2024.

There is so much wrong with this piece that it requires another article on its own. Simply look at the sub-headline — focusing on guns, doomsday culture, anti-government messaging and you get the picture. Of course it also mentions the mythical Diagolon connection. To top if all off, the final piece of the article, while seeming to forget all four men were exonerated of the conspiracy charges ponders why they weren’t charged with terrorism!!

But let’s get back to the equally biased and bad reporting at the time of the men’s arrest and thereafter. When the four men were denied bail, not a single member of the media questioned why, particularly given that under the bail reforms introduced by the Trudeau government even accused murderers receive bail – yet these men were denied it. Only the Epoch Times penned a piece on the subject.

None had criminal records, all had supportive families, three were fathers and all were gainfully employed; some even owned their own businesses. Given these factors they could hardly be considered a flight risk or a danger, yet bail was denied them time and again.

During their time in custody they endured conditions which should have shocked most Canadians. This included periods in solitary confinement, strip searches, substandard medical care, substandard food, a complete disregard for their mental health, and no attempts to provide them exercise or recreational facilities or activities that inmates in actual prisons would have ready access too. Yet none of this was ever questioned or investigated by the media. Not a single media outlet thought that such harsh treatment of Canadian citizens – yet to be found guilty of any crime – by the justice and corrections systems was worth shining a light on. 

Even now, as the not guilty verdict has been rendered on the most serious charge — conspiracy to kill police — media outlets like the CBC and the Canadian Press (CP) still can’t can’t seem to wrap their heads around the fact that after two long years of being slandered as members of some ‘far-right’ extremist group hellbent on killing cops and taking down the government – a jury didn’t buy their media spin, nor that of the Crown, the RCMP or the government. The not guilty verdict was rendered despite accusations from the Crown that they were part of what the then presiding RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki, described to former Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino as: “A hardened cell of individuals armed to the teeth who possessed a willingness to do down with the cause.” Mendicino went on to add the following unsubstantiated accusations, none of which were even remotely close to the truth:

"The dangerous criminal activity occurring away from the TV cameras and social-media posts was real and organized. It could have been deadly for citizens, protesters and officers. We need to be clear-eyed about the seriousness of these incidents and indeed, several of the individuals at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right extreme organization with leaders who are in Ottawa."

This statement made by Mendicino was a devious attempt by the Trudeau government to form a tenuous connection between Coutts and the Ottawa protest in order to clear the way for its planned use of the Emergencies Act which was already in the works. The Coutts verdict, as it now stands, and the Federal Court ruling which also indicated that invoking the Act was not needed given the Coutts ‘situation’ had been ‘resolved’ by the time the Act was invoked — has been shown to be nothing but a pack of lies.

These statements and allegations by Lucki and Mendicino bring up other questions… such as:

Was this entire case, regarding the conspiracy charge simply a monumentally gross intelligence and investigative failure on the part of the RCMP? Or rather, was it a case of Canada’s ‘independent’ federal police force being coerced, corrupted and co opted by the Trudeau government to do its bidding in finding a viable reason for it to invoke the Emergencies Act on the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa?

Were these men kept in custody and denied bail because the Trudeau government used their arrests justify invoking the Emergencies Act. And if that is the case, does that make these men political prisoners as posited by fellow substacker Gord Magill in this Newsweek article? Yet, again, not a single member of the mainstream media tried to connect these dots and ask some serious questions on the subject and neither have any explored that possibility in light of this verdict.

And perhaps this is why the mainstream media has reported on the jury’s finding in the manner it has. They couldn’t resist recapping how the jury heard ‘statements’ and text messages from the ‘accused’ warning that the blockade was the ‘last stand against a tyrannical federal government’. In their reports on the verdict they highlighted the text messages Carbert sent to his mother where he called the police ‘losers’ and ‘the enemy’, adding that he’d equated the blockade to a war and told his mother that if the police came in and they lost the fight, he would likely die in wider conflict.

When it came to Olienick media reports recapped how he told the undercover cops that if the blockade was lost, the next step might be an invasion from United Nations troops, and that if the police tried to storm the barricade he would, ‘slit their throats’. Again, in these reports, no mention was made of the fact that this statement came from the cop’s recollections and conjecture, and not from an actual tape recording of Olienick expressing such sentiments.

It seemed the media was trying to make the case that even though the jury found these men innocent of conspiring to kill police, there was still good reasons for the charge to have been laid, and to be pursued by the Crown with a vengeance that, quite frankly, has bordered on the psychotic. And Johnston’s quick decision to appeal this verdict, which came from a jury, only reinforces his obsessive mindset on the matter.

The media also couldn’t be bothered to mention that Carbert and Olienick had already spent over two years behind bars before their trial even began. Nor did they think it might be noteworthy to mention that the reason these men were denied bail for over two years was solely due to the charge from which they had just been acquitted! None of that seemed to be important. And a Google search of media reports also reveals that not a single media outlet has written any editorial comments or opinion pieces on the ordeal these men endured due to the implied seriousness of a charge on which they have now been acquitted, save for the a piece in the Western Standard which I would describe as tepid at best in terms of its demand for accountability.

https://www.westernstandard.news/opinion/editorial-900-days-and-innocent-a-full-public-inquiry-is-needed-for-coutts/56767

Then there is the matter of accusations of possible prosecutorial misconduct against the lead Crown prosecutor in this case, Johnston. This issue arose during the early stages of the pretrial for all four men back in July of 2023. It would seem that the Crown, in providing disclosure evidence to the defence had, either by accident or oversight, neglected to redact a portion of that evidence. In other words the Crown had inadvertently given the defence some material it had not wanted the defence to see. Upon receipt of that material the defence accused Johnston of having given false and illegal instructions to the police leading up to the arrest of the men, adding that the Crown had improperly instructed the police. The word fraud also came up when the defence demanded that the information it had received and any further information and communications between the Crown and the RCMP regarding the arrests be released as it was germane to their case.

What followed after that remains a mystery, primarily due to publication bans. The Crown claimed the information was protected by solicitor-client privilege, and thus the material was placed in a sealed envelope and left with the judge presiding over the case to determine whether it should be released, and thus the envelope remains sealed. It was also at this juncture in the trial that Johnston and his co-counsel were recused, yet, somehow, with little explanation, both eventually eventually returned to continue to prosecute the case. So the question remains, what is in that envelope and just how damning were the accusations against Johnston?

Well, independent journalist Mocha Bezrigan, who was essentially the only reporter covering the Coutts trial at the time attended the pretrial proceedings when arguments around the contents of that envelope were again rehashed in November of 2023. In the aftermath of those proceedings he posted the following statement on X: "I’m in the courtroom of the Coutts Four right now, and the things that are taking place would be in the magnitude of a bombshell in the political arena, but I can’t report on it like I’d have been able to during July’s pretrial due to the automatic ban."

Monumental intelligence failure or fabrication.. what happened to Diagolon?

Much of the initial reporting, by the media on the arrest and charging of these men centred on their purported association with something called Diagolon, which mainstream media went all in on, describing it as a far right accelerationist, neo-facist and even a terrorist group—therefore characterizing these men in the same way. The media, in those reports, relied almost exclusively on the ‘intelligence and assessments’ of Diagolon by the Canadian Anti Hate Network (CAHN), which is a left-leaning organization that openly prides itself in only ‘investigating’ what it deems are right wing organizations. It also receives considerable funding from the Trudeau government.

The RCMP also made claims that the men were somehow ‘members’ or associated Diagolon. Yet its own intelligence analysts did not even have a clear definition of what Diagolon was.

In fact, those assessments even questioned the veracity of the extremist claims CAHN had made about Diagolon.

The copies of these RCMP intelligence assessments were taken from the Hate-Gate report prepared by Toronto lawyer Caryma Sa’d and Elisa Hategan a former member of CAHN who obtained them through access to information requests. The Hate-Gate report was another newsworthy item regarding the Coutts saga that the mainstream media completely ignored.

In fact, Diagolon, as it was explained in the Hate-Gate report, was nothing more the product of a podcast created by Afghan war veteran Jeremy Mackenize called, ‘The Raging Dissident’. McKenzie had created it as a meme, for entertainment purposes, for his followers and to promote his podcast. While his podcast, which could be described as theatrical and boisterous, and highly critical of the current government, the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the RCMP, it was by no means violent, nor did it bear any resemblance to any type of accelerationist movement or terrorist organization, again as RCMP intelligence assessment had already concluded. During the Public Order Emergencies Commission (POEC) Inquiry Mackenize was called to testify and even under cross-examination he was able to dismantle most of the erroneous claims CAHN had made about Diagolon.

So it is hardly surprising that during the trial of Carbert and Olienick the name Dialogon was barely whispered by the Crown. All the hyberbolic nonsense about it being a terrorist organization and that these men were associated with it, burst like a balloon full of too much hot air — because that is what it was.

Now, this verdict for Carbert and Olienick, together with the dropping of the conspiracy charges against Morin and Lysak have blown apart the whole absurd notion that these men were involved in ‘Diagolon, and that their arrests and the ‘discovery’ of this so called ‘murder’ plot made it necessary for the Trudeau government to invoke the Emergencies Act and declare Martial Law across the entire country. Yet, POEC Commissioner, Liberal appointee Justice Paul Rouleau, still referenced Diagolon, and this tenuous connection to the Coutts men, as a key element in his finding that the Trudeau government was justified in invoking the Emergencies Act.

In one of the articles that I penned back in October of 2023, as part of the Coutts Four Chronicles, I asked if the justification for the use of Emergencies Act by the POEC and therefore the Trudeau government was a house of cards — pointing to the conflicting intelligence reports, tenuous connections and serendipitous coincidences surrounding that justification. I asked what if the removal or changing of a single card could bring down the entire house, and what if that card could be the Coutts Four?

And so the question remains, with all four men exonerated of the conspiracy charge, is this the card that will cause the house upon which the invocation of the Emergencies Act rests to fall? And is this why the Crown, who lost the case on that very important charge, is now appealing the not guilty verdict? In the meantime, two men, now exonerated of that charge, who should be free men, given that bail was only denied them due the seriousness of the conspiracy charge, are still behind bars. Why is that? Yet another question around this very mysterious case around the Coutts Four that has yet to be answered.

The National Post article that I mentioned earlier begins by stating that “There will be a place in Canada’s history books for the divisive and dramatic blockade at Coutts.” It then goes onto say, “Just how future historian might view the Coutt protest — the people , the weapons, the doomsday last-stand… is anyone’s guess. I suspect the author thinks the protest will be viewed in very dark terms. So do I, but not for the actions of the protesters as the author seems to think. But rather, for the actions of the police, the governments and the courts, against all the protesters, and in particular, for the terrible injustices the Coutts Four suffered and endured in its aftermath, and how they were used as pawns to justify the Trudeau governments invocation of the Emergencies Act.

This week I had the privilege of participating in an episode of Trish Wood is Critical’s podcast to discuss the case of the Coutts Four. They are the four men — Anthony Olienick, Chris Carbert, Chris Lysak, and Jerry Morin — who were charged with conspiracy to murder police during the protest against government imposed COVID 19 mandates that occurred in the border town of Coutts Alberta in February of 2022.

The Coutts protest was an offshoot of the Freedom Convoy protest against government imposed COVID mandates that was occurring in Ottawa at the same time. All four men were denied bail and have been held in remand custody since their arrests in 2022. Morin and Lysak were finally released in February of 2024 after the Crown dropped the conspiracy charges against them and the two men plead guilty to much lesser charges that which would have likely only resulted in a fine or probation, yet they spent almost two years in jail, based on the serious charge of conspiracy to murder police, which the Crown dropped, one can only conclude, due to lack of evidence.

The trial for the remaining two men — Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick — on that conspiracy charge is currently underway in Lethbridge, Alberta. In her podcast Trish Wood — an awarding winning Canadian journalist — discusses the trial and the Coutts case with three citizen journalists who have been covering the case on their Subtack platforms: Roxanne Halverson on The Intrepid Viking and Gord Magill on Autonomous Truck(er)s and also on Newsweek) and Stevland Ambrose on X, as well other podcasts and discussion forums.

They, along with a very few others, such as Canadian writer and journalist Ray McGinnis, are providing far more in depth and truthful coverage on the case than the mainstream media. The same media who ignored the plight of these men who were incarcerated for over two years without bail and without going to trial, but they are now covering the trial of Carbert and Olienick with what can only be described as the same clear bias they had regarding the guilt of these men when they were initially arrested.

Also on her podcast Trish calls our Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, for pledging another $500 million dollars for the Ukraine war, while line ups at Canadian food banks continue to grow, as well as the mounting issues around the mental acuity of US President Joe Biden.

As the trial of what now has become known as the Coutts Two drags on through the doldrums of summer, as prepossessed Crown Attorney Stephen Johnston doggedly prosecutes and persecutes Tony Olienick and Christ Carbert for their right to protest the government, questions about the Coutts protest still linger. Unfortunately answers to such questions are not readily forthcoming.

Why were protesters at Coutts border crossing that occurred during the Freedom Convoy in 2022, targeted with RCMP raids, major arrests, jail and court cases, while other border protests occurring at the same time were not? This includes the cross border protests that occurred in Emerson, Manitoba, at the Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, Ontario, and at the Pacific Highway in British Columbia, 

The Ambassador Bridge in Windsor, was a far more important border crossing, in terms of the economic impact it had on Canada, compared to the tiny town of Coutts stuck in the middle of the windswept prairies. Criminal charges were laid against quite a number of protesters at the Ambassador Bridge, yet most have since either been withdrawn or quietly settled through alternative means. A number of protesters charged with mischief resolved their cases by agreeing to make cash donations to a local charity. Charges were also withdrawn against the ‘alleged’ leader of the Ambassador Bridge protest William Laframbois. The Emerson protest was resolved without injury, incident or arrests according to the Manitoba RCMP.  There has been little, if any media coverage of what occurred at the BC border protest. And we have just recently learned, according to a recently obtained via FOIPOP request, the RCMP at Coutts were profiling protesters as early as February 2, 2022, based on the fact that they had Possession and Acquisition Licences (PAL) indicating that they owned a firearm – a legally obtained and licenced firearm. What was that all about?

As well, in Coutts, George Janzen, Marco Van Huigenbos, and Alex Van Herk were specifically identified as ‘leaders’ of that protest and charged with mischief over $5,000. All three have since been found guilty of that charge and are awaiting their sentencing which could mean jail time. Then, of course, there is the ongoing saga of the Coutts Four – Jerry Morin, Chris Lysak, Chris Carbert, and Tony Olienick – arrested on the very serious charges of conspiracy to murder police on evidence that appears to be questionable at best. Other charges against the men included mischief over $5000, and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes. Lysak and Morin were finally released after spending two years in remand custody. All the charges initially laid against them were dropped by the Johnston, the Crown prosecutor. Instead both men plead guilty to minor gun charges that never would have amounted to two years in jail; which has left a serious black mark on Canada’s justice system. At the very least the Crown’s dropping of the serious ‘conspiracy to kill cops’ charge, certainly weakened its case against the other two men.

Meanwhile, Carbert and Olienick remain in custody and are currently on trial in Lethbridge, Alberta on that charge of conspiring to kill police. The trial is likely to go on for a couple of months as the Crown attempts to prove a case that is based on very weak evidence. I hate to be a conspiracy theorist, but does this treatment of the Coutts protests have anything to do with Trudeau’s pathological hatred of Alberta? Does it also stem from the fact that one of the people considered to be a ‘leader’ of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich, also hails from the province? But as I said at the outset of this piece, these are just questions, to which I do not have answers. I am just asking questions that seasoned reporters should be asking instead of me.

There were a total of thirteen people charged as a result of that dragnet of raids carried out by the RCMP in Coutts on February 13-14, 2022. What happened to the nine other people who were charged, along with Carbert, Olienick, Lysak and Morin? According to what the RCMP told the media they were also part of this ‘organized, dangerous and armed group’, at least according to the headlines in this Globe and Mail report and dozens of other media reports.

The raids and charges were the result of what was reported as an ‘imminent threat’ based on information three undercover female officers who had infiltrated the protest provided to their superior officers. These are the nine other individuals who were charged with mischief over $5000 and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes: Jaclyne Martin 39, (Jerry Morin’s wife), Ursula Allred 22, Luke Berk 62, Evan Colenutt 23, Johnson Law 39, Justin Martin (no relation to Jaclyne Martin), Easton Oler 22, Janx Zaremba 18 and Joanne Person 62.  

All of these are indictable offences, carrying sentences of up to ten years in prison. The RCMP spokespeople who gave media briefings after the arrests, made it clear that they believed these nine people were ‘associated’ with this larger group to which the Coutts Four were apparently attached, and were also part a ‘plot’ to overthrow the government. Yet, we have heard very little about this so-called ‘association’ and the ‘plot’ since then. There has been no mention of any of these individuals at the ongoing trial of the remaining two men Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick, yet it was implied at the time of their arrests, that they were associated with these men. It was further implied that they owned some of the guns* that were seized as a result of that raid, displayed in that now ‘infamous’ photo released by the RCMP the day after the arrests.

*Guns that were seized and displayed in this photo were legally registered and owned.

At the time of the arrests of these nine ‘associates’, the mainstream media, including the Trudeau government’s state broadcaster, CBC made every effort to portray all of them as hardened criminals with headlines such as “previous criminal convictions, a willingness to die for the cause… CBC has learned new details about some of the men and women arrested in connection with the Coutts, Alta., border blockades. Yet of those nine charged, only two had some type of record involving a conviction for assault and another had infractions for hunting during off season, so they were hardly a bunch of criminals with serious arrest records, as the media tried to imply at the time.

Four of the nine charged have since had the charges dropped or withdrawn

Since their arrests we have heard very little about their court cases from the media. Only the local news outlets — the Medicine Hat and Lethbridge News — have reported on their cases. In July of 2022 these papers reported that the Crown prosecutor, Stephen Johnston, had stayed the charges of mischief and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes against two of the nine that were arrested – Luke Burke and Johnson Law.  A few months later, in December of 2022, they further reported that the Crown, again, Johnston, had also stayed these same changes against another ‘member’ of this group, Janx Zaremba. A ‘stay’ means the Crown chose to suspend legal proceedings against these individuals, but could recommence the case within a year should evidence warrant it. Suffice it to say that it has been well more than a year since the charges against these individuals were stayed, so it would appear ‘no evidence’ arose that warranted the Crown ‘recommencing’ any further prosecution of them.

Joanne Person

In January of 2023, the CBC reported that the Crown, again, Johnston, withdrew the charges of mischief and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes against Joanne Person, a 62 year old school teacher and grandmother that had been arrested with the other eight individuals. Johnston did not provide any reason for dropping the case against Person. So four of the nine individuals charged in this so-called plot to overthrow the government, have essentially had charges against them dropped due to lack of evidence. Sounds like the Crown’s evidence against them isn’t as solid as it, or the RCMP, for that matter, thought, which leads one to wonder what type of evidence they have against the other five, if any. 

As for those other five, Justin Martin, Evan Colenut, Ursula Allred, Jaclyne Martin and Easton Doler Lethbridge and Medicine Hat News reported in November of 2022, that these individuals were scheduled to stand trial in July of 2023. Since then I can find no reports anywhere as to whether the trials took place or whether they were postponed or rescheduled. 

However, in a podcast ‘The Voice of GO(r)D that aired in November of 2023, one of the accused, Jaclyne Martin (the common-law wife of Jerry Morin), told the host, Gord Magill, who has been reporting on the Coutts Four for the past two years, that her court date had been rescheduled for June of 2024.

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Enemies of The State with Jaclyne Martin

Jaclyne Martin joins Voice Of GO(r)D to discuss the situation with her man Jerry, and the other men facing a Kafka-esque nightmare as pawns being used to justify the actions of the venal and vindictive regime of Justin Trudeau. Now having spent over 630 days in remand without bail nor trial, these men are suffering a grave injustice in what is clearly a…

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2 years ago · 15 likes · 10 comments · Autonomous Truck(er)s

This change in date came about when Martin discovered that she was going to be tried with the four other individuals as a co-accused. As she did not know any of them she asked her lawyer make an application to the court to have her case severed from her other ‘co-accused’. Martin was not required to appear in court when these ‘arrangements’ for her trial were made, which is why she was initially unaware of the circumstances of her trial. As well, her lawyer had somehow, in Martin’s absence, managed to overlook her initial instructions on the matter — that being to to ensure that she was to be tried by herself and that she would be tried by a jury. 

She told Magill that the Crown, again the one and, it would seem, the only, Stephen Johnston, had not only wanted to have her tried with the other co-accused, but also implied she was not entitled to a jury trial, which was not the case. Martin’s lawyer was successful in the application he finally made to severe her case and elect a jury trial. Now Martin is due to be tried alone, before a jury of her peers, but not until March of 2025! That is over three years from the date that she was charged in February of 2022.

Again, the question one has to ask is what has happened to the concept of a speedy trial in our justice system? Even the original trial dates, first scheduled for June of 2023 and then June of 2024, should not be viewed as ‘speedy’. In situations such as Martin’s and perhaps for the other four accused, the Jordan principle may be applied. Based on a Supreme Court of Canada ruling in 2016, the Jordan principle established times within which trials must be heard either 18 months* or 30 months* after the charges were laid against an individual, unless there is something unusual to justify it. If the trial does not take place within these time frames the proceedings must be stayed. Martin was charged on February 14, 2022, and March 2025 is now her trial date, some 36 months since she was charged, so she would be fully within her rights to make a Jordan application. 

*18 months for a provincial trial, and *30 months for superior court trial

So, to summarize this matter, four of the nine people charged in this ‘investigation’ by the RCMP have had their charges dropped, for all intents and purposes. A fifth has had her trial delayed to the point that she now may make an application to have her charges dismissed under the Jordan rule, because Canada’s justice system has failed to meet its obligation in giving her a speedy trial. And the other four may also be able to make the same application if they have not yet gone to trial or have their charges dealt with to date. And one would think that, if the Crown prosecutor had a solid case against these people, they all would have had their cases dealt with at this point, two and a half years since the charges were laid.

What’s with all the crying and weeping theatrics by RCMP officers at the Coutts trials? We have seen three examples of this odd behaviour, which most people would find somewhat unbecoming from seasoned veterans of the RCMP given the circumstances they were recounting.

The first incident occurred during the trial of protest attendee, James Sowery. He was charged with assault with a weapon and dangerous driving after it was alleged he attempted to run down an RCMP officer at a check point during the Coutts protest. In January 2024, he was found guilty of those charges and sentenced to ten months in jail – a conviction and sentence that he is appealing. According to Sowery, the incident occurred when he pulled out onto the highway in his truck, after filling out his log book. At that point he saw RCMP Const. Cory Kornicki, who was manning a checkpoint, get out of his police cruiser and wave at him. Sowery thought he was waving him through the checkpoint and drove on. However, at Sowery’s trial Const. Kornicki emotionally testified that Sowery “swerved the vehicle towards me.” Another RCMP officer told the court that Kornicki was tearing up and visibly shaking after the incident. According to Kornicki he “was shocked and reduced to tears.” 

In his victim impact statement, read to the court, Kornicki said he was unable to control his emotions in front of other officers and members of the public at the site. “It is truly difficult to communicate the depth that this trauma has reached after the events of that day. I am extremely thankful that I escaped physical harm, but the mental and emotional scars from that incident remain.” Now one would think that many RCMP officers, in their line of duty, will have encounters where they feel physically threatened or find themselves in dangerous situations, but are still able to maintain their composure and not break down into tears. One would think that is an important aspect of police work.

Is that not what police are trained to do – remain calm and composed in dangerous situations? But according to this cop, the trauma from this incident is so great that he still carries the emotional and physical scars some two years later. If such a questionable incident wherein a truck apparently hits a traffic pylon near him elicits such a traumatic and dramatic reaction, one hopes he never encounters a situation where he is shot at or someone comes at him with a knife or another type of weapon. It causes one to wonder if this was just theatre for the jury who did ultimately convict Sowery.

The second incident occurred during the trial of the Coutts Three. It was during the testimony of RCMP Superintendent Gordon Corbett, a senior officer and 27 year veteran of the Force. Corbett served as the Critical Incident Commander for the RCMP operations during the Coutts protest, meaning it was his job to provide leadership and direction to the operation. Corbett became emotional and actually started weeping when he was recalling what he described as a fearful moment involving a female RCMP member who was posted at a traffic checkpoint. She apparently reported to Corbett over the radio she was feeling threatened and intimidated by a large tractor with an attached blade (a snow plow?) that was driving towards her, and she feared it was coming too close. Corbett was brought to tears as he recounted her fearful communications about the situation over the police radio. Was her life in danger? Was this snow plow vehicle coming right at her? It gives one pause to wonder what about this situation was so frightening — a snow plow passing by a police checkpoint in the middle of winter

Many who were in the courtroom to witness this display by Corbett found it insincere and disingenuous. As a senior commissioned RCMP officer, with nearly thirty years of policing experience under his belt, surely he’d encountered more serious incidents over the course of his career that might bring a tough cop to tears. Things like a horrific car accident with no survivors, a murdered child, an abused child, or a badly beaten woman. As well, Incident Commanders undergo rigorous training to enable them maintain their composure during critical incident and emergency response operations. They must keep their wits about them in order to make appropriate and measured decisions to ensure the response operation is efficiently and safely handled, particularly if the situation heats up, so to speak

So one would think a police officer of a senior rank with that type of training would have better control of his emotions while giving testimony in a courtroom. This is what led many who witnessed his testimony to find it contrived and theatrical. Not to mention, what did this have to do with the guilt or innocence of the three men on trial? None of them were driving or directing the snow plow driver.

The third occasion of cops weeping on the witness stand occurred during the ongoing trial of the Coutts Two. It was during the testimony of the first of three female undercover officers (UCO) who had infiltrated the protest and reported the ‘imminent threat’ that led to the arrests of the 13 individuals during the RCMP raids in Coutts. All three of the UCOs gave their testimony in a separate courtroom where the media and public were not allowed in order to protect their identities as UCOs. During the testimony of the first UCO she began to tear up, which was audible to the media and public hearing only the audio of her testimony in a separate courtroom. It was when she was describing a conversation she claimed she had with the defendant Tony Olienick when he was discussing how he was prepared to ‘slit the throats of RCMP’ if a confrontation between the police and the protesters should occur. It was at that time that she lost her composure and began to weep.

One would think that a cop that is a 20 year veteran of the force and has spent 17 years as a UCO, with 37 different undercover deployments to her credit, would have encountered far more serious situations that would cause such emotions to rise. Yet it is apparently someone, as she claimed, which is only a claim, because she wasn’t wearing a wire to record this conversation, that was talking about a hypothetical scenario in which police might be killed.

One should also be reminded that this same UCO, who broke down in tears, also testified that emotional control was a skill set she possessed as an undercover investigator. And as one observer listening to the testimony noted, another skill set of UCOs is acting. They must play roles and display appropriate emotions every time they work an undercover operation, leaving one to wonder if this testimony with the tears, was yet another role played for the jury.

So those are three ‘quirky’ questions that, as I say, don’t really have any clear answers. They just seem form a very strange element and aura around the whole Coutt protest and the police operation around it. And there is one final question, that everyone should be asking the Crown Stephen Johnston. That is — why has it taken coming up on three years to bring these cases to trial? One would think that any Crown Attorney, if they had solid evidence in such high profile cases, would have been quicker to bring the cases to trial and get convictions. But only Johnston can answer that question.

The criminal trial that never should have been finally got underway in Lethbridge, Alberta last week. Of course, it once again had to be delayed a few days, due to some scribbling on the sidewalk outside the Lethbridge courthouse that caused the Crown to have vapours over, citing the incident as a ‘threat’ to the jury. I can say no more about that because that portion of the trial is under a publication ban. But finally, on Thursday June 13, 2024 the trial of the Coutts Two, who had previously been known as the Coutts Four began in earnest, with the jury impaneled to hear the opening arguments from the Crown and the defence attorneys and the first testimonies from Crown witnesses, of whom there will be many – primarily from the RCMP. 

On trial on charges of conspiracy to commit murder of police (RCMP members) are Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert. They are two Alberta men who were caught in a dragnet of RCMP operations and raids that occurred during the Coutts border blockade protest just outside of the border town of Coutts, Alberta, which was part of the larger Freedom Convoy protest which took place in Ottawa in February of 2022. Protesters were calling for an end to the draconian COVID mandates and restrictions that had been imposed on Canadians by the federal and provincial governments for two long years. Olienick and Carbert were arrested and charged with the conspiracy to murder police along with two other men – Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak.

However, this past February, after spending 723 days in custody as they were denied bail, all the original charges against Morin and Lysak were suddenly dropped as they plead guilty to minor firearms offences. Under normal circumstances, for first offenders, these charges would have resulted in a fine or probation—not two years of hard time in remand custody where the luxuries of an actual prison, such as proper medical care and nutrition, and access to some form of exercise facilities are normally available to inmates. Such a major development surely must have weakened the Crown’s case, given that conspiracy charges generally involve a group of accused, not just one or two individuals, yet the chief Crown prosecutor, Steven Johnston seems determined to make examples of these last two men. Their arrests are what the Trudeau government used to justify its use of the Emergencies Act on the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, so a conviction would be a feather in Johnston’s cap and help the government save some face, given that a federal court has since ruled its invocation of the Act was illegal and unconstitutional. 

All four of these men, according to the RCMP, were identified as ‘key’ members of a larger ‘cell’ of bad actors involved in a plot to overthrow the Canadian government. In media briefings the RCMP indicated that there were other ‘unidentified suspects’ of a purported ‘criminal organization’ that the four men allegedly belonged to. Yet, despite assurances by RCMP brass that these ‘unidentified suspects’ would also be rounded up through the intrepid investigative efforts of the RCMP, no such suspects were ever found, or were arrests ever made. This left  only the four men originally arrested on the conspiracy charges, until this past February when Morin and Lysak were released because, it would seem, that the Crown did not have the evidence it needed to bring them to trial. They spent two years behind bars despite this grievous error, but there is nothing unusual about that nor any moral outrage on the part of the mainstream media, the justice system, or even the federal opposition party for that matter.

Delay, After Delay During Pretrial Phase

The lack of due process for the men, from a legal perspective, is also scandalous. June 12, 2023, was the original trial date for the men, almost a year to the day that the actual trial is now beginning in earnest. So why, one might ask, has it taken two years to bring the case to trial? After all, under Canada’s justice system, the accused are entitled to a speedy trial. One would think that even a year’s delay in bringing a case to trial would seem unduly long, particularly when said suspects were not granted bail–in the justice system, where under the Trudeau government, bail is even granted to accused cop killers. Yet, now that it’s been two years no one has even batted an eye over this travesty. Not the justice system, not the government and certainly not the media. But that seems about par for the course for this whole bizarre situation. And bizarre it has been from the get go.

Back when trial was set to begin in June of 2023, the court spent weeks dealing with various legal applications and motions that stemmed from previous court proceedings as well as questionable behaviour on the part of the Crown. These motions were all put forward during the pretrial phase of the proceedings, before a jury has been selected and impaneled. Defence attorneys for the accused sought a publication ban on the Information to Obtain (ITO) documents the RCMP used to get search warrants for the raids they conducted in Coutts. The ITOs are documents wherein police, under oath, cite for the presiding judge the reasons they believe they require a search warrant to obtain evidence related to the commission of a crime. In this case the ITOs resulted in search warrants that ultimately led to the arrest of the men and the seizure of a cache of weapons that has been associated with them since the day of their arrests — pictures of which were widely displayed by the media.  The defence argued that the ITOs used to obtain said warrants contained little more than hearsay and conjecture primarily from female undercover RCMP officers who had infiltrated the protest — which could not be proven because they had not been tested in court. (This will be further explained later in this article)

The defence requested the ban, which was granted by the presiding judge, Justice David Labrenz, because, the defence argued, such biased information could prejudice a jury. However, all that information that had already been unsealed and released to the media, and thereby the public by the previous judge during the arraignment of these men, so it was somewhat of a moot point.

The media had already had a field day with the material, in which they essentially already tried and convicted the men in the public sphere. Nevertheless the defence felt it was important to make the effort to avoid having the information make headlines yet again. It should be noted, however, that despite this ban, none of the media outlets who had made the spurious allegations against these men or published the photo of the gun cache ever removed their reports or photos from their websites. 

Crown Accused of Failure to Disclose Evidence and Prosecutorial Misconduct

The defence lawyers then went on to make further motions accusing the Crown of failing to provide full disclosure of evidence, failure to provide timely disclosure of evidence and failure or refusal to respond to additional disclosure requests from the defence. They argued that the men’s constitutional rights were violated due to this wilful lack of disclosure by the Crown, as it hampered the ability of the accused to make full answer to the charges against them. Following on these motions, the Crown did provide further disclosure of evidence, but in that latest disclosure in July of 2023, the Crown, perhaps in its haste make up for its tardiness, mistakenly provided some information that it had meant to redact, but neglected to do so. That unredacted information resulted in the defence making the claim that the Crown prosecutor, Steven Johnston, had given both false and misleading instructions to the RCMP leading to the arrests of the men.

The defence went on to say that the Crown had acted illegally, asserting that this material and more information related to these prosecutor-police communications should be released given the import of what they revealed. While such information is usually covered by solicitor-client privilege, meaning it is meant to be confidential between the client (RCMP) and the solicitor (Crown), the defence argued it should be made public given that, in their view, the Crown had improperly instructed the police. The Crown countered this argument  with a ‘surprise’ affidavit – another late disclosure – that was ultimately not admitted as evidence. The judge then adjourned the case, to give himself time to review that defence’s application to have these communications between the Crown and the RCMP made public. The still ‘secret’ documents were placed in a sealed envelope, awaiting Justice Labrenz’s decision. Then in another surprising move the Crown prosecutor Steven Johnson and his co-counsel were both suddenly recused from the case. 

What followed was another example of a complete disregard for the men’s situation, as Justice Labrenz, after ruling that the sealed package be delivered to his chambers by the Crown prosecutor (who had replaced Johnston) forthwith, called another adjournment because he would be going on vacation for a few weeks before he could return to contemplate how to proceed with this sealed package of what appeared to be pretty damning information about the Crown prosecutor and possibly the RCMP. So the men would have to spend at least another month in jail before returning to trial. The pretrial proceedings on this ‘package’ resumed in September, with the decision on whether the contents of that package would be made public still in limbo and then the whole trial, again went on hiatus until November of 2022, meaning that the four men, not yet convicted of any crime, would spend another two months in remand custody. But again, nothing to see here, at least according to mainstream media who had ignored the case after the initial arraignment of the men. 

Pretrial Publication Ban Issued by Supreme Court

Then in late October, just weeks before their trial was to resume, the Supreme Court of Canada issued a ruling that essentially placed a publication ban on all pretrial proceedings in Canada. Interestingly enough their ruling was based on the notion that, “Publication of information that comes out at pretrial conferences may very well be prejudicial to the fair interests of the accused”. 

Unfortunate that such a ruling had not applied to the Coutts Four at their initial arraignments, but how serendipitous that it now would apply to the pretrial proceeding around that mysterious sealed envelope that may contain some damning information about the Crown. It should be noted that the Supreme Court’s ruling was based on a completely different case and had nothing to do with the Coutts Four proceedings. 

Nevertheless, when the pretrial proceedings resumed in November, the publication ban was in place and all matters related to the sealed envelope could no longer be made public. Independent reporter Mocha Bezrigan attended those proceedings, which were still open to the public and the media, and later posted the following statement on X: “I am in the courtroom of the Coutts Four right now, and the things that are taking place would be the magnitude of a bombshell in the public arena, but I can’t report on it like I had been able to during the July’s pretrial, due to the automatic ban.”

The Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston, who suddenly miraculously reappeared as chief prosecutor on the case, after his recusal last July, was also quick to remind court attendees that punishment would be swift and severe should anyone consider violating this ban. So, until this day, as the actual trial for the remaining Coutts Two begins, the contents of that envelope and whether it was ever unsealed or not remains a mystery. A mystery, that again, not a single member of the mainstream media is interested in questioning. 

Then, of course, Christmas and New Years rolled around meaning another lengthy adjournment of the case, which meant these men would be spending their second Christmas behind jars, and away from their families. Just a brief reminder that three of these men – Carbert, Morin, and Lysak – are fathers whose children would once again be missing them for Christmas. Chris Carbert, in early December of 2023, made a bail application, with the faint hope he might spend Christmas with his children. He had to wait until January 2024 to learn he would not be released. The presiding judge, Johnna Kubick, a federal Liberal appointee, who has donated to the Liberal party at least 26 times – in a remarkable case of cognitive dissonance – cited that releasing Carbert would cause the public to lose faith in the justice system! Quite a remark, considering the train wreck this entire case has been to date!

Defence Wants RCMP Search Warrants Thrown Out

The pretrial resumed in February of 2024, with all proceedings remaining under a publication ban. What could be reported on was an application filed by the defence to have the search warrant that was executed against the men by the RCMP to enter their trucks and trailers thrown out. The defence argued that the Information to Obtain (ITO) documentation provided by the RCMP to obtain the warrant was both insufficient and based on hearsay. This was primarily due to the fact that much of the basis for the ITO’s relied on generalized handwritten notes – and only notes (no wire-taps/no audio recordings) – prepared by those female RCMP Under Cover Officers (UCO) who infiltrated the Coutts protest to monitor the actions of the protests and to perhaps even agitate the situation. Proceedings were then adjourned until March, awaiting the judge’s decision on the motion. Again, due to the publication ban, which warrants were tossed by the court, will likely only come to light during the trial, which is where we are now.

Thus the trial begins, with the accused, who are also prisoners, sitting inside a glass enclosure, built, one must assume especially for them. Their defence lawyers did request two things for these men, the first was that the shackles they must wear be removed before they appear before the jury and second that they be given cushions to give them some comfort from the hard metal benches they must sit on in that enclosure for hours on end. Now, Justice Labenz did take time to explain to the jury that despite the fact that these men are prisoners, and have been held in remand custody for the past two years, this does not change the fact that they are innocent until proven guilty. If the irony of that statement is lost on anyone, including the judge himself, they must be lacking some finer reasoning skills, but I digress.

The Crown in its opening statements to the jury, which were widely reported in the mainstream media, who now have taken a sudden interest in the case after two years of wilfully ignoring it, were quite dramatic. The Crown prosecutor who gave the opening statement, Matt Dalidowicz told the jury that Olienick and Carbert had, indeed, conspired to kill police officers and believed they were justified in doing so. “They planned and prepared for what they believed would be an inevitable, violent event. They believed, in their own minds, that they had the right to act violently in response to the police enforcing the law to end the blockade. They saw this as ground zero.” According to the Crown, the RCMP faced a “challenging situation” when the blockade began in January of 2020. He then went on to explain that while they had talked to “protest leaders,” (would that be the Coutts Three now convicted of mischief over $5000), they learned more through their undercover officers (UCO).

Those would be three attractive female RCMP members they had assigned to investigate the activities at the Coutts blockade. Dalidowicz told the jury that these UCOs had uncovered a ‘group’ within the blockade that was planning something much more sinister than blocking the border. “They discovered they were no longer simply dealing with a mere protest. They discovered a plot to kill police officers, if police enforce the law to end the blockade.” The how, and what and why of this plot, one would assume will be what the Crown will reveal as it presents its case to the jury in the coming weeks.

Testimonies of Undercover Cops Amounts to Nothing More than Hearsay

But there is one fly in the ointment regarding the Crown’s assertions about this ‘plot'. It is predicated on the testimonies and evidence of what these three UCOs ‘uncovered’ and undoubtedly reported to their superiors, one would think. Yet, these police women, who were given this assignment, to investigate, infiltrate and gather evidence on any suspicious activities around the protest, used no wires or recording devices to record the conversations of, or with, any of the protesters.

So, it is only their memories and perhaps notes of what they observed or heard that they are relying on. Is that not simply what would normally be termed hearsay evidence in a court of law? Also, wasn’t this the evidence that the defence was calling into question on the ITO documents for the warrants it wants tossed. Strangely enough as the mainstream media were recounting the testimonies of these UCO’s and their ‘conversations’, primarily with Tony Olienick, they didn’t think to mention that none of the evidence they presented could be backed up with recordings of said conversations. The were reporting it as though it did come from wiretaps or recordings, but that has been par for the course on the mainstream media’s laziness in reporting on this case.

The testimonies of these three women were unusual which added more drama to the court proceedings. Because these RCMP members continue to operate as UCOs in other operations, their identities had to be protected, therefore they gave their testimonies in a separate courtroom where only the judge, lawyers, the jury, the defendants and the courtroom staff were present. The public and media remained in another courtroom where they could only hear the audio of their testimonies. 

During their testimonies they were asked whether the RCMP generally used wiretaps and body cameras during undercover operations, to which they replied they usually did. As to why they did not do so in Coutts, their only answer was that did not know, and that someone else would have to answer that question. The question in that regard is, are their going to be senior RCMP officers called to testify who will be able to offer any type of reasonable explanation for such an oversight? There should be, particularly in such a serious a matter where two men could face life in prison if they are found guilty based on nothing more than hearsay evidence from these UCOs based on memory or their interpretation or perhaps misinterpretation of said conversations and notes, from over two years ago!

The testimonies of the three seemed to focus in on Olienick who seemed to have interacted with them more than the other men. As a matter of fact they all indicated they had little, if any contact with Carbert, which causes one to wonder why he is on trial at all. Many of the things the UCOs testified to in their conversations with Olienick seemed to centre more on how he felt about the police presence there, rather than any particular plot against them. Any such words spoken by Oienick in that regard could also be open to misinterpretation and innuendo as was revealed under cross examination by the defence.

But coming back to Chris Carbert, who the UCO’s admit they had little if any contact with. Where or how does he fit into the picture? Well, the Crown’s problem is that the in a ‘conspiracy’ charge, more than one person has to be involved in the plot. When Lysak and Morin were offered and took a plea deal, that left only Carbert and Olienick to keep the ‘conspiracy’ charge alive. So, it would seem that Carbert is being brought along simply to secure such a conviction. But if the evidence against Carbert is so thin, how can a jury possibly convict him? And if they can’t convict him, then how can they convict Olienick, alone, on a conspiracy charge? That seems to be quite a conundrum. How the Crown plans to tackle that conundrum remains to be seen, but it certainly can’t be based on the what amounts to hearsay evidence from three undercover police alone. Perhaps justice will finally prevail for these men and the jury will deliver a not guilty verdict. Or better yet, before it comes to that, the case will be thrown out of court for the sorry sham that it has been from the get go.

In one of my more recent pieces on my Substack I took note of a court ruling in BC wherein a BC Supreme Court judge found that a change of venue for the trial of an accused murderer was appropriate. Why? Because of the hardships the defendant would face if he was made to leave his rather posh jail facilities in Kamloops to spend the duration of his trial in a windowless basement cell at the RCMP detachment in Cranbrook BC, not far from Creston BC where the murder occurred. The judge in making his ruling agreed with the defence’s arguments that such hardships could also impact the fairness of his trial. That ruling caused me to compare this man’s circumstances in receiving a venue change over simply the prospective hardships he might face, to the two years worth of extreme hardships endured by the Coutts Four. The men arrested and charged, on very thin evidence, of conspiracy to murder police, at the border blockade protest that occurred in Coutts, Alberta in February of 2022 in support of the Freedom Convoy.

Now as the pretrial for the remaining two* of the Coutts Four reconvened on May 24th, there are even more bizarre arrangements that have been made that will surely increase their hardships and could certainly affect the fairness of their trial. A newly built metal and glass enclosure has been installed in the courtroom where the two men will be required to sit, while shackled, segregated from the rest of the courtroom, for the duration of the trial. Freelance writer, commentator and Substacker, Gord Magill, has been following this matter very closely. In his Substack, Autonomous Truckers, he provides a very detailed account of the additional hardships and humiliation and demonization these men will endure when their trial before a jury begins… in his article…. Theatre of the Absurd… a Kangaroo Court is about to get underway in the Maple Gulag.

*Two of the Coutts four were released in February when the conspiracy to murder police charges were dropped and they plead guilty to minor charges that weren’t even in the original indictment.

Autonomous Truck(er)s

Theatre of The Absurd

This past Friday, May 24, pre-trial hearings resumed for Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert, the remaining two of the original Coutts Four, at the Lethbridge Courthouse in southern Alberta. They stand accused of several charges, including the heinous, though extremely fantastic and absurd, charge of ‘conspiring to murder police officers…

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2 years ago · 22 likes · 10 comments · Autonomous Truck(er)s

This is happening in Canada. Two men with no criminal records to speak of; hardworking ordinary guys, being treated like the most notorious of serial killers. Paul Bernardo, a ruthless killer and rapist who was found guilty of torturing, raping and killing two teenage girls, Kristen French and Leslie Mahaffy, wasn’t subjected to this kind of treatment during the course of his trial. Yet, this is happening to these men and not a peep from the media, legal authorities, justices, politicians…. the list goes on. This is actually even more absurd than the new metal and glass courtroom cages built for the Coutts 2.

A Supreme Court judge in B.C. recently ruled to have the murder trial for a defendant, Mitchell McIntyre, moved to a different venue to "prevent hardship on the defendant”. The defendant, 64 year old McIntyre is accused of second degree murder in the shooting death of Julia Howe, the common-law partner of his landlord in Creston, BC. The trial was originally set for Cranbrook, because its courthouse is closest to Creston, where the murder occurred and where most of the two dozen trial witnesses live.

Yet, Justice Paul Riley, deemed it necessary to move the trial to Kamloops, due to the substantial hardships McIntyre would face if he was moved from the Kamloops correctional centre, where he’s been in custody since his arrest, to jail facilities at Cranbrook’s RCMP Detachment for the duration of his trial. During his preliminary hearing McIntyre did have to travel to Cranbrook; a nine hour trip where he was shackled in leg irons and handcuffs in the back of a sheriff’s van. In Cranbrook he spent 18 days in a windowless jail cell at the RCMP detachment, where there were no recreational facilities and he was only allowed out of his cell to attend the pretrial and to have a shower. As a sheriff had to be on hand to monitor him while he showered he only had four showers during his 18 day stay. His meals consisted of frozen waffles for breakfast and reheated meat pies for dinner.

That was quite a contrast to Kamloops correctional centre where McIntyre had a cell with a window and two bunks all to himself, regular recreation time in the yard or in a gym, access to television and reading materials and a daily shower. Health care was also readily available to attend to his health problems which include heart issues, high blood pressure and psoriasis. McIntyre’s lawyers argued that the same hardships he faced during his preliminary hearing, including the trip itself, and the conditions he experienced at the RCMP Detachment’s facility, would undermine their client’s ability to participate in the trial proceedings and could impact the fairness of the trial. Justice Riley agreed, and granted the change of venue to Kamloops, so he could remain the the Kamloops facility. The move will also mean additional expenses of $24,000 to $35,000 to fly or drive all the witnesses to Kamloops for the trial. I am not saying it was wrong of the judge to grant this move to McIntyre, because an accused is innocent until proven guilty and should be treated humanely and have his rights respected.

What I am saying is that the hardships McIntyre endured at the Cranbrook RCMP Detachment for 18 days, pale in comparison to what four men endured in remand centres in Alberta, for two years, and counting. And I am talking about the Coutts Four – Jerry Morin, Chris Lysak, Chris Carbert, Tony Olienick – who were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police as a result of a series of RCMP raids at the border blockade protest that took place in Coutts, Alberta, during the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa in February of 2022. They spent two years in remand custody, in conditions far worse than McIntyre’s 18 days in Cranbrook. Two of the men Jerry Morin, and Chris Lysak were released, just before their two year anniversary behind bars, as a result of plea deals involving much lesser charges that weren’t even in the original indictment, but that’s another story unto itself. The other two men, Carbert and Olienick, remain in custody still awaiting trial. What these men endured — conditions that the judges in their bail and pretrial hearings should have been well aware of — didn’t result in any type of change of venue or a change of heart for that matter.  The men could only dream of being held in someplace like the Kamloops correctional centre like McIntyre.

Justice Riley thought it was a hardship for McIntyre to be transported to Cranbrook from Kamloops, shackled and handcuffed in the back of a sheriff’s van just once or twice. For the two years all four of these men were transported in such a manner countless times from their respective remand centres to the Lethbridge Courthouse for pretrial proceedings that sputtered along for months and months, started and stalled with constant adjournments. During these trips they were also shackled and often subjected to humiliating strip searches upon their arrival at the Lethbridge facility where they were often held in solitary confinement because as co-accused they could not share a cell. Olienick, on one occasion, following the adjournment of a pretrial hearing in Lethbridge, was not returned to the Medicine Hat Remand Centre, where he is normally held, for 18 straight days all of which he spent in solitary confinement at the Lethbridge facility. This occurred in December of 2023, and had it not been for supporters acting on Olienick’s behalf he could well have spent Christmas in solitary, in Lethbridge. Olienick, has spent at least 80 days in solitary confinement or segregation, over the course of his court appearances in Lethbridge, where he was locked up for up to 22 hours of the day, sometimes for as long as two weeks at a time.

During their stays in remand centres in Medicine Hat, Calgary and Lethbridge all four men have endured substandard medical care, received absolutely no mental health support, have had to put up with substandard food such as meals that are stale or cold, along with a callous disregard for their general well-being. They have no access to outdoor or indoor recreational facilities and have restricted access to their families. They often had to deal with overcrowding in their facilities with inmates being made to sleep on floors. Often while in custody the men were exposed to distressing and traumatic incidents such as witnessing drug addicts going through the pains of withdrawal or inmates with mental health challenges engaging in such behaviours as screaming for hours on end, and having hallucinations. Sleep is difficult if not impossible for these men in these situations. 

Jerry Morin’s situation is unique and troubling. He was arrested some 12 hours after the other three men, and ultimately ended up in a Calgary remand centre where he was placed in a maximum security unit normally reserved for gang members. There he faced a potentially dangerous situation where he could suffer violent encounters with other inmates when he was in the general population. While incarcerated there he was denied visits with his common-law wife for a period of 19 months, and did not see his children who were 18, 13 and 10, until he was actually released from custody as a result of his plea deal. He spent close to 100 days in solitary confinement, not due to any bad behaviour on his part, but often for his own safety, because of where he was incarcerated. 

Then there is Chris Lysak, a giant of a man; he is six foot five and has size 15 feet. During his incarceration he was not given the correct shoe size, so he had to cut off the toes of the shoes he was given in order to get his feet into them. The thin and old mattresses supplied at the remand centres were also not capable of supporting his large frame, yet he was not given an extra, or new mattress that could accommodate his weight and build. 

Whereas McIntyre, in the Kamloops facility, has health care readily available to him to attend to his health problems, health care for all four men has been nothing short of a nightmare for them. Olienick suffers from Small Intestine Bacterial Overgrowth which requires a specific type of probiotic to manage it. He has been denied access to such a probiotic purely due to bureaucratic red tape and callous disregard for his health. Without the probiotics Olienick suffers considerable pain and discomfort, and often cannot eat what is given to him.  

Chris Lysak suffered from severe pain in his knees and had been having injections to control it. He requested that he be allowed to have a follow up appointment with the doctor who had been treating him prior to his incarceration, but that request was denied. The facility doctor recommended that Lysak use a stationary bike as part of his rehabilitation for his knees, but the remand facility that housed him didn’t have a bike and weren’t particularly interested in getting him one. It was only through outside advocacy on the part of supporters that finally got him a bike. Since his release Lysak has been undergoing intensive physiotherapy to address many of the issues that arose with his physical health as a result of the conditions of his incarceration. 

Chris Carbert had issues with a wisdom tooth that went on for several months before he was actually seen by a dentist. After the tooth was pulled a canker sore developed on his tongue resulting in his tongue becoming badly swollen and putting him in great pain. He asked for pain relievers or a numbing agent to help control the pain, but instead spent six days in unbearable pain where he could not speak or eat, before the swelling went away. Carbert also had a number of members of his family pass away while he was in custody including his father and brother. Carbert was not issued temporary leave to attend their services, though he would not have gone anyhow if he had to appear in chains and shackles. He was allowed to watch the live video of his brother’s funeral through arrangements made at his remand facility. 

So it would seem that a B.C. Supreme Court Justice felt that an accused murderer would experience undue hardship if he was forced to spend a few weeks at an RCMP remand facility during his trial, but not a single judge in the country seems to care about the undue hardships the Coutts Four have endured for two long years at various remand centres in Alberta. Certainly not the trial judge or the judges they have appeared before for bail hearings, in which, of course, they were denied bail.

Something is terribly wrong with our justice system, which can only be described as completely lopsided and corrupt in terms of how certain prisoners are treated and others are mistreated and that mistreatment is completely ignored by authorities who have been well aware of it for sometime. I do not begrudge Mitchell McIntyre’s right to remain in a facility that can meet all of his needs during the course of his trial. But cases like McIntyre’s only magnify the fact something that something is terribly wrong with a justice system seems to have one set of rules for those facing charges for their association with the Freedom Convoy and another set of rules for everyone else. The Coutts Four are simply the most egregious example of this, which leaves one to wonder if there will ever be justice for the Coutts Four.

There's an interesting piece by the Canadian Press (CP) that's been making the rounds in the mainstream media the last day or so, all with the same headline. That being that - Officers weren’t told of threats to harm police, RCMP convoy protest report says.

Officers weren’t told of threats to harm police, RCMP convoy protest report says

In case you’re confused, the headlines aren’t referring to the Freedom Convoy protest that took place in downtown Ottawa for three weeks in the winter of 2022, because there were no threats to harm police there at all, actually no violence of any kind. Instead they refer to an offshoot of that protest, the border blockade at Coutts, Alberta that coincided with the Ottawa protest where four men* were arrested and charged with mischief over $5000, possession of a weapon for dangerous purpose and the very serious charge of conspiracy to murder police (RCMP). 

According to an After-Action Report on the RCMP’s response to the Freedom Convoy, dubbed Project Natterjack, the arrests of these men and this ‘conspiracy to murder’ are the ‘threats to harm police’ that RCMP members on site at Coutts were unaware of. The report obtained by the CP via an Access to Information request stated that: “that some officers at the scene of an Alberta blockade were unaware of threats to harm police until after the episode ended.” It goes on to say that some RCMP at Coutts; “were not aware of the threats to police officers until after the blockade concluded and some had only learned about the threats through media reporting.”

*Those four men have since become known as the Coutts Four have spent over 700 days in remand custody, locked up without bail and without being convicted of a single crime. Two of the four, Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak were released in early February after reaching a plea deal, wherein the charges of conspiracy to kill cops were dropped. The other two remain in custody awaiting their trial which is set to begin in May 2024.

The report then notes; “This raises a number of officer safety concerns for members who are deployed to the front line and as an organization this issue must be addressed. It is imperative that all front-line members receive briefings prior to being deployed, which includes information about possible threats to life.”

This revelation also raises other questions about the whole investigation and operation at Coutts that led to the arrests of those four men who were apparently charged in connection with said threats. It also raises questions regarding the claims made by the Trudeau government, and the RCMP. That being that the situation at Coutts was so serious and so dangerous that it required the government to invoke the Emergencies Act. Yet, it seems, it wasn’t so serious, or so dangerous that senior leaders at the RCMP thought to ensure members on the ground were aware of this ‘dangerous’ situation at Coutts — a plot to kill cops, to kill them. 

These arrests on charges of conspiring to kill cops, according to the RCMP, were the result of a larger ‘very complex’ investigation into the ‘discovery’ of a ‘domestic terrorist cell’ that ‘had attached itself to the protest.’ A ‘cache’ of weapons, thought to be associated with this so-called ‘terrorist cell’ was also seized as a result of raids.

Much of this was predicated on the revelations of two female undercover RCMP who had infiltrated the protest posing as right wing activists and reported what they determined was an ‘imminent’ threat that led to the raids and arrests of the four men, plus an additional nine others who were charged with mischief over $5000 and possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes. The Coutts Four, as the four men have come to be known, according to the RCMP, were ‘identified’ as key members of this ‘cell’ and thus, were additionally charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police officers in support of a plot to overthrow the Government of Canada. 

This sounds very serious. Some RCMP members in Coutts were investigating an imminent threat, and a possible cell of domestic terrorists, and the possible existence of cache of of weapons and ammunition that was later found and seized as a result of raids, but the powers that be at RCMP National Headquarters (HQ), in Ottawa, or K Division HQ in Alberta didn’t have the wherewithal to provide this information to all their members on the scene in Coutts?  And the After-Action Report notes that this misstep might “raise a number of officer safety concerns.” 

Now it would seem that the only ones in the dark on this ‘threat to police’ were the RCMP member in Coutts that weren’t part of the investigation. Because at the Public Order Emergencies Commission (POEC) Inquiry, then Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino testified that on February 13, 2022, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki advised him that there were likely armed protesters at the border blockade in Coutts. This, in turn, prompted Mendicino to relay that information to the government’s Incident Response Group* (IRG) on the afternoon of the same day. He brought the information to the IRG, he told the POEC, because, “It underlined to me that there was a hardened cell of individuals, armed to the teeth with lethal firearms, who possessed a willingness to go down with the cause.” He told the POEC, “Lives literally hung in the balance… we were potentially seeing an escalation of serious violence. It was a threshold moment for me.”

*A group composed of senior government ministers and officials convened to deal with the convoy demonstration in Ottawa and the various border blockade protests. 

So this is the intelligence information that the Public Safety Minister, in consultation with the RCMP Commissioner, brought to this group of other senior government officials, including Prime Minister Trudeau, that, “Lives were literally hanging in the balance.” But nobody thought, including the RCMP Commissioner herself, to ensure that this information was being relayed to RCMP members on the ground in Coutts? Was she even at the IRG meeting to expand on this critical new ‘intelligence’ she had given Mendicino? The following day, the Trudeau Cabinet made the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act. So all senior government officials also knew about this threat, everyone, it would seem, except the cops who were the apparent target of the threat.

Or maybe it wasn’t such a threat. Maybe it was just made to be seen as a dangerous threat. Dangerous and dire enough to create the circumstances to concern and perhaps even frighten Canadians who then wouldn’t question the government’s decision to declare Martial Law across the country. Mendicino, it is clear, did everything he could to make this apparent to the public by the statements he made to the media two days after the arrests were made and the government had invoked the Act. “The dangerous criminal activity occurring away from the TV cameras and social-media posts was real and organized. It could have been deadly for citizens, protesters and officers. We need to be clear-eyed about the seriousness of these incidents and indeed, several of the individuals at Coutts have strong ties to a far-right extreme organization with leaders who are in Ottawa." And of course the mainstream media happily parroted his words. 

Now since that statement by Mendicino was made two years have passed and a lot has happened in those two years. First and foremost all the charges brought against two of the men arrested in Coutts – Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak – were dropped. That includes conspiracy to kill cops, mischief and possession of weapons, in exchange for a plea deal involving minor firearm infractions. This was after Lysak’s attorney made a Section 8 application, pressing the Crown to disclose all the evidence it had against the two men and the Crown opted for a plea deal instead. As well, Mendicino’s claim that the men had ties to a far-right organization that had leaders in Ottawa has also never been substantiated.

Meanwhile, the trial for the other two men, Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick is still bogged down in the pretrial process, meaning their actual trial before a jury has yet to begin – more than two years after their arrests and, for that two years, they have remained in custody. At their most recent pretrial proceedings in February of this year their defence attorneys entered a motion to have the search warrant the RCMP executed against the men thrown out.

They argued that the Information to Obtain (ITO) documents were improper and the resulting search warrant that was granted, was also not properly executed by police. If that search warrant becomes inadmissible it could substantially punch another big hole in the Crown’s case, given that two of the four men have already had their charges dropped based on evidentiary matters The bottom line on this is that there seems to be a good number of issues around the evidence the Crown has, and how it obtained that evidence.

Since the men were arrested the accusation of them being part of a cell of domestic terrorists has pretty much fizzled out. That group was apparently something called Diagolon, which the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN), which is generously funded by the Trudeau government, maligned with bad and biased ‘intelligence’. CAHN claimed that Diagolon was a right wing accelerationist militia style group bent on bringing down the government by violent means. Yet, it is nothing more than an online meme created by a pod caster called ‘The Raging Dissident. All of CAHN’s assertions about Diagolon have been debunked, in some cases by the RCMP’s own intelligence reports, determining it was nothing more than a figment of CAHN’s imagination. 

And despite the RCMP and the government's efforts to depict these men as a group who were ‘working together’ the evidence has become increasingly clear that no such ties existed. Chris Lysak and Chris Carbert were friends, but did not know Morin or Olienick, who did not know each other other or either of the Chrises. They were all arrested separately at different times, at different locations and even on different days. Three of them were arrested on February 13th, and Morin was arrested on 14th in his truck, on his way to work. The RCMP has never indicated whether any of that cache weapons depicted in the famous photo belonged to any of the men, they have only inferred it. 

So when one looks at where this case has gone, and where it may be going – perhaps there was never really any threat to harm RCMP officers at Coutts and that’s why they were never told there was one - because it never existed. Perhaps it was just a pretext cooked up by the government together with senior RCMP officers, to set the stage for what Trudeau had been itching to do to the Freedom Convoy since it arrived in Ottawa. Punish its members and organizers for daring to challenge his policies – and that he did by physically crushing the protest and freezing the bank accounts of protesters under the auspices of the Emergencies Act.

Now the media are running this headline… Officers weren’t told of threats to harm police, RCMP convoy protest report says, but they don’t seem particularly interested why this was the case. It doesn’t seem to occur to them to ask the question - why weren’t they told? They just seem to take the RCMP’s After-Action Report at its word; that this is an officer safety issue that must be addressed. Perhaps they should try connecting the dots and then they may come to realize that four men just spent two years behind bars for no reason other than the whims of this government’s vindictive desire to teach the Freedom Convoy a lesson. Two of the men are now free, but the other two of them remain in custody, denied bail, and could face possible life imprisonment if this charade continues, and if such questions continue to go unanswered. 

I came across this comment piece by columnist Gwyn Morgan, in the Financial Post section of the National Post newspaper, on March 5th, titled — Truckers get jail time while real criminals get bail and parole — with sub-heading: Even Canadians who didn’t agree with the trucker convoy’s message should be concerned by the obvious disparity in their treatment by the legal system.

The National Post is a one paper, I find, that gives a primarily conservative view, but with a balanced reporting and editorial stance on most political matters. I must say it was heartening to see an article in mainstream media that was pointing out how people who were arrested and charged with various ‘crimes’ during the Freedom Convoy were being unfairly treated by Canada’s justice system. Morgan pointed to two such situations to make his case. One was the ordeal faced by Tamara Lich, considered a primary orqanizer of the Freedom Convoy, who was arrested, refused bail and spent weeks behind bars, until she was finally granted bail, only to be re-arrested and jailed again for what was an unfairly deemed a breach of her bail conditions.

But Morgan didn’t mention Pat King, who was also arrested during the Ottawa protest, and while he may not have been the convoy’s best representative, he too was denied bail and spent 100 days in remand custody, before he was released, with a trial date set for May of this year.

In his second example Morgan referenced the recent release of Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin, both of whom, he wrote, had been charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police during the border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta in 2022. He described their plight of being held in custody and denied bail, for 723 days, with Morin having spent 74 of them in solitary confinement, until the Crown suddenly dropped the conspiracy to murder police charge and offered them a plea deal on minor firearms charges. Now again, it is heartening to see the persecution of these men being brought to light in any mainstream publication for change. However, if Morgan was going to write this story maybe he should have done a little more fact checking and dug a little deeper, where he would have found even more persecution and scandal to underscore his argument that the scales of justice, seem a little uneven when it comes to the Freedom Convoy.

For example how could Morgan have failed to mention that Lysak and Moran were half of a quartet of a men who have come to be known as the Coutts Four? And that the other half of the Coutts Four are Lysak’s and Morin’s co-accused — Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick— also charged with conspiracy to murder police — who are still in custody in remand hell, for over two years now, with a trial date set for May 2024. And if he wanted yet, another example of bail being unfairly denied, he could have mentioned that Chris Carbert had made, yet, another bail application just before Christmas last year, but the judge put off ruling on his application until mid-January, thus ensuring he would spend a second Christmas behind bars. Then the judge, Johnna Kubik, denied his application on the absurd grounds that releasing him would “cause the public to lose faith in the justice system!” He might have also noted that Kubik was appointed to the bench by the Trudeau government, had donated to the Liberal party 24 times.

Morgan might also have wanted to check his facts, as he identified Morin and Lysak as ‘protest leaders’ at the Coutts border blockade, which was simply not the case. In fact, Morin had hardly spent any time at the protest, because he had been working in Vancouver most of the time the protest was underway, as his wife Jacelyne Martin has mentioned on numerous occasions. Lysak, again, was not a 'leader' in any capacity, but simply a participant. With a little further investigation he may have learned the trial for the three men who have actually identified themselves as the 'organizers' of the Coutts protest is underway right now in Lethbridge. They are Marco Van Huigenbos, Alex Van Herk, and George Janzen who are charged with mischief over $5000 and the judge in their trial, has ruled for some reason, to place a publication ban on the entire trial, not just the pretrial. The judge’s reasons for wanting such secrecy around this trial have not been made clear.

Now maybe I am quibbling and should just be happy that some journalist somewhere has decided to pay attention to this lopsided aspect of our justice system when it comes to the ‘truckers’. And probably most people wouldn’t notice the inaccuracies or omissions, if they hadn’t been following these cases as closely as I have. But therein lies my point. If you’re going to write an article on a subject, do the research in order to give your readers all the facts, to make your argument all the more convincing — which in this case the is the obvious disparities in our legal system when it comes to truckers.

Pretrial proceedings for the remaining two men of the Coutts Four — Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick, resumed at the Lethbridge Courthouse on February 20th and continued through to the 23rd. The original Coutts Four were the four men charged with conspiracy to murder police during the border blockade protest in support of the Freedom Convoy that took place in Coutts, Alberta in February 2022. In early February of this year, two of the men, Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin, in a shocking and unexpected turned of events, took plea deals to much lesser charges and were released from custody — after spending two years in remand. Carbert and Olienick remain in custody and were present for the pretrial hearing.

Chris Carbert Tony Olienick.

As there is now a publication ban on all pre-trial proceedings in Canada as a result of a Supreme Court ruling issued last fall — there is little that those attending the hearings can report on or say. Many of the supporters of the men who came to see the proceedings were upset to learn that the trial had been moved to a much smaller courtroom that can only accommodate 20 people, leaving many out in the cold — literally. Courthouse officials say the move is the result of rennovations occuring in the larger courtroom, where the all proceedings for the Coutts Four had previously been held. However, some attendees are skeptical about that excuse as this man explains to independent journalist Mocha Bezirgan who has been covering the trial.

https://twitter.com/BezirganMocha/status/1761087814010319142?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

The primary focus of these pretrial proceedings was a motion from the defence to have the search warrant that was executed against the men by the RCMP thrown out. The defence is arguing the the Information to Obtain (ITO)* was improper and the search warrant that was granted, as a result of it, was also improperly executed by police. This is a critical element of the defence’s case because if the search warrant becomes inadmissible it could substantially impact the Crown’s evidence and case against the men. However, we cannot report on the points of the defence’s argument nor on what the Crown’s argument was, to oppose the motion, due to the publication ban.

*The ITO is a document filed by a police officer to a judge that sets out sworn evidence to establish reasonable grounds for believing an offence has been committed in order to obtain a search warrant.

RCMP officers did give testimony during the hearing, however, again, due to the publication ban, what they said while on the witness stand cannot be made public at this point. Supporters who were able to attend the in the courtroom were fairly optimistic about the proceedings and found some of what they heard quite shocking. But that is about all that can be said about it.

The case has now been adjourned until March 18th while Justice David Labrenz, the judge presiding over the trial makes a decision on the defence’s motion. So Carbert and Olienick will spend another four weeks in remand while they, no doubt, anxiously await the judge’s decision. It is apparent that should Justice Labrenz decide to throw out the search warrant, as the defence has asked, it could be a serious blow to the Crown’s case.

It is obvious the Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston does not want any of the goings on in the courtroom leaking out, because in his closing comments on the last day of the proceedings he advised the court that, due to numerous breaches of the publication ban, a criminal investigation has been launched, so it will be interesting to see how that plays out. But, it sounds like a veiled threat to anyone who attends the hearings.

Meanwhile, question’s still remain as to why Lysak and Morin were offered a plea deal, while Carbert and Olienick were not, although the both of them have stated publicly they want their day in court to prove their innocence. The release of Lysak and Morin, however, casts a lot of doubt on the strength of the Crown’s case, because if they didn’t think they had enough evidence to convict those men, why do they think they have enough to convict Carbert and Olinick?

And still the silence continues from the mainstream media, none of whom were present in the courtroom for the pretrial. You would think the release of Morin and Lysak might have sparked some curiosity or peaked their interest to learn what the evidence is that the Crown still thinks it has to convict these two men. Only Mocha Bezirgan (@BezirganMocha) who has been reporting on the case from the beginning was there, along with Ezra Levant, from Rebel News, who has take a sudden, but many feel — too little too late — interest in the case. The jury portion of the trial is set for May 27, 2024.

There has been another interesting development in the Coutts Four case. Ezra Levant, Rebel News founder and the face of the news organization has done a bit of an about face on the Coutts Four situation, since the release of Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak. Both men took a plea deal on much less serious charges, than the original very serious charge of conspiracy to murder police. While Levant seemed to be of the mind— for quite some time — that the four men could very well be guilty of the charge of conspiring to murder police, the release of two of the men on these lesser charges seemed to have left him wondering just how solid the Crown’s case is, or ever was, against the four men. This led him to finally visit one of the two men who still remain in remand, for over two years now — Chris Carbert, and to also talk to his family. Following on this meeting Carbert, and the recent developments regarding two of his co-accused Morin and Lysak, Levant has decided to extend a helping hand to Carbert in paying his legal fees.

Rebel New has crowdfunded through its own organization, and through the Democracy Fund, hundred and hundreds of members of the Freedom Convoy for, what he called, civil liberty offences — this includes Tamara Lich — who is currently on trial in Ottawa. with her co-accused Chris Barber who is being funded by Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms.

But Levant says he made the decision not to crowdfund for the Coutts Four before because of the seriousness of the criminal charges they faced, and quite frankly — based on his previous reports on the case — perhaps his belief that they might very well be guilty of the charge of conspiracy to commit murder. But as he indicates in his report, he is not so sure about that now. Why he has chosen to meet with Carbert and support him and not Carbert’s other co-accused Tony Olienick, who is also still in remand custody, Levent did not say in this report. He does, however, explain his rationale for the decision to support Carbert quite clearly.

This is also a heartening development, because finally a member of the alternative media has finally turned its attention to the Coutts Four, and hopefully will continue reporting on it and perhaps do some real investigative reporting. Perhaps Mocha Bezirgan an independent journalist, who has been the lone reporter on this case almost from the beginning, will now have some company. And maybe other such media will follow suit.. True North Media, where are you?

Here’s the link to Levant’s report.

https://www.rebelnews.com/ezra_levant_visits_coutts_four_defendant_in_prison_sets_up_crowdfunding_campaign_on_the_eve_of_trial

https://twitter.com/ezralevant/status/1759977741892653316?s=20

On Tuesday, February 5th, 2024, the men known as the Coutts Four made headlines for the first time in two years. For the first time since they were arrested at the border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta in 2022 and charged with mischief, possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes, and the very serious offence of conspiracy to murder police. They made headlines then because they were accused of being part of a ‘terrorist’ group who were planning to kill cops. They’ve made headlines now because two of the men, Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak, who have been in custody since the day they were arrested –723 days in jail – without a trial or a conviction – took a plea deal on lesser charges and are free men. That’s how most headlines read.

But the real headline should have been — Crown Prosecutor Steven Johnston Dismisses Charges of Conspiring to Kill Cops Against Two of the Coutts Four. Charges of mischief were also dropped, and the charge against Lysak of uttering threats, also gone. All gone and forgotten – like they never happened – as though the charges had never been laid. But they were, and these two men spent two years behind bars, for something the Crown now admits they didn’t do, or at the very least, doesn’t have the evidence to prove they did what they were accused of.

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Jerry Morin also spent 74 days in solitary confinement due to the lack of adequate holding facilities at remand centres.

Yes, they pleaded guilty to lesser charges – Morin for apparently conspiring to traffic a firearm – there’s that word again ‘conspiring’, but he never did actually traffic it. Lysak plead to a charge of improper storage of a firearm which was licensed, registered under his name and legally purchased, and was not on his person. These charges, which are thin at best, were never part of the original indictment that led to their arrests in the first place, and are peanuts compared to the conspiracy to kill cops charge that kept them behind bars for two years–because they were a ‘danger’ to the public. The idea that they were given ‘time served’ on these charges is also outrageous, because in most cases, as first offenders, they would have received a fine or probation – no jail time, let alone two years of hard time in a remand centre — which is the equates to three years in an actual prison due to hardships experienced in remand centres.

The plea deal was the result of Lysak’s new lawyer, Daniel Song, bringing a Section 8 charter application to examine the Crown’s case against the men. Section 8–which deals with search and seizure and a right to privacy–compels the Crown to open up its case and provide full evidentiary discovery to the defence–evidence it may have acquired via what may be deemed illegal search and seizure, in this case by the RCMP.

Just a few days ago Lysak and Morin were considered terrorists. They were believed to be part of a right wing militia-like group called Diagolon that the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) had produced unsubstantiated intelligence on that has since been debunked – and too dangerous to be released on bail under any circumstances. Now they are free men and no danger to society at all. Quite an amazing turn of events! When these men were initially charged and the ‘evidence’ against them was made public, the media went wild reporting on this ‘murder plot’ and this so called ‘right wing extremist group known as Diagolon. They were tried and convicted in the public square.

The media did not feel compelled to follow up on their case or to report on the terrible conditions they often endured in remand custody, or the delays in setting a trial date for men that were being held in custody for months and months. Nor were they concerned with the ongoing delays in their trial, which was held up by a series of pre-trial hearings that were marred with accusations of late disclosure of evidence and, in some cases, refusal to disclose evidence to the defence, on the part of the Crown, and later accusations of prosecutorial misconduct. The media was silent – crickets, except for reporting on the occasions when the men had been denied bail, yet again.

And it appears that media silence is back. Because other than reporting on the release of Morin and Lysak, as I scan the national news media there is again, no follow up, no curiosity, no comment, no editorial opinion of this rather surprising turn of events. Not in the National Post, the Globe and Mail, the Toronto Sun or the Toronto Star, nor on the websites of CBC, CTV, and Global News, Even alternative or ‘conservative’ media like True North, the Epoch Times or the Western Standard don’t seem to have an opinion on these rather surprising developments. An independent publication called Troy carried an article, with some editorial comment, written by Canadian author Ray McGinnis who has been following the Coutts case—Justice system under scrutiny after the Crown drops conspiracy charges against two of the Coutts Four. But other than that there has been no follow up, by any Canadian media, on this rather shocking turn of events. 

And shocking it is. After two years in custody, and a trial that never really began, the Crown prosecutor, Johnston, in dropping the conspiracy to murder cops charge, has admitted, and the presiding judge agreed, that the Crown did not have enough evidence against these two men to prosecute them. How is it that in country like Canada, people only accused of a crime — not convicted — can be locked up for two years, in some of the worst prison conditions possible. Where they are denied proper medical care, denied the right to see their families, shackled in court, subjected to routine strip searches, and spend days in solitary confinement and the media aren’t asking questions? Then suddenly those charges are dropped, in a case where the Crown had expressed such confidence in winning he made it clear be would be seeking the maximum sentence - life in prison. Yet, no one in the Canadian media seems curious as to how this came about.

The Crown has essentially admitted that these two men are innocent of the serious charges of conspiring to kill cops, and only guilty of much lesser charges, which never should have amounted to the time they spent in remand, and the media isn’t interested in delving into this debacle of justice? They aren’t asking questions, of the Crown, the judiciary, the RCMP or the government? One would think this is a story that any reporter worth their salt would be salivating to get their hands on. Something the CBC’s The Fifth Estate would have been delighted to sink their teeth into once upon a time, before CBC lost its way.

The dropping of the charges against these men may have serious political ramifications as well, but again, the media don’t seem interested in that either. The Trudeau government used the ‘discovery’ of this plot to kill police as the lynch pin for invoking the Emergencies Act to crush the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa. Former Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino testified to that at the Public Order Emergencies Commission (POEC). He said RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki had told him there was ‘a hardened cell of individuals ready to go down for the cause’ in Coutts, and he feared that if the arrests of those individuals didn’t go well, it might cause a ‘chain reaction’ at the Ottawa protest.

The POEC Commissioner, Justice Paul Rouleau, (appointed by the Liberal government) agreed. In his Executive Summary of the POEC he stated the following: “The situation in (Coutts was) a concrete manifestation of the very risk that had been identified to Cabinet: a highly disruptive, but mainly peaceful protest that included a smaller group of actors who allegedly intended to effect serious violence a political purpose.”

So why isn’t anyone asking about just how much the Trudeau government was involved in the arrests of these men and their imprisonment, as it was what Trudeau used to justify invoking the Emergencies Act. And what about former RCMP Commissioner Lucki? What role did she play? She told Mendicino about the ‘plot’ that triggered Cabinet’s decision to invoke the Act.

Lucki has already earned reputation of bending to this government’s will, as she did when she pressured the Nova Scotia RCMP investigating the Portapique mass shootings to release details of the guns used in the killings to help the Liberals get their gun legislation passed. Why aren’t reporters asking just how heavily the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO) was involved in directing this investigation. Why aren’t they asking what communications, if any, occurred between the PMO and the RCMP and the Crown Attorneys prosecuting this case before and after the charges were laid?

What specifically was the evidence the Crown had that they were so certain they could get a conviction, and what, if anything, changed to compel a plea deal? And what about those accusations of prosecutorial misconduct that resulted in the Crown prosecutor, Steven Johnston, recused from the case albeit briefly. This arose when the defence received disclosure information the Crown had inadvertently neglected to redact and alleged, from that information, that the Crown had given false and illegal instructions to the police leading up to their arrests. Would these allegations against the Crown have anything to do with the plea deal made with these two men? Well, we don’t know, because that information never came to light, because of a publication ban on all pretrial proceedings in Canada, due to a Supreme Court ruling issued in October of 2023. And speaking of Court rulings, does this plea deal have anything to do with the Federal Court ruling that the Trudeau government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was illegal. Could a trial and any information that comes out at it, embarrass the Liberal government even more, or impact their appeal of the Federal Court’s ruling?

There is so much to unpack here, yet the Canadian media isn’t even interested in opening the suitcase. Why aren’t reporters making Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy (FOIPOP) requests to get answers to these questions if the government, the Crown and the RCMP won’t answer them. Why isn’t media going after the Canadian Anti-Hate Network (CAHN) now that it is clear that allegations they made about Diagolon which contributed to the arrest and vilification of these men were utter rubbish. Why isn’t the Conservative Party grilling the government on this debacle?

Given the mainstream media’s penchant for protecting Trudeau and company it may not be that surprising that they are steering clear of this story, just as they have for the past two years. But why are the established alternative media not doing some investigative reporting? True North Media, and the Western Standard have published little more than the mainstream media on the release of Morin and Lysak. Rebel News, has done some reporting, but it has been sparse, and still seems to assume their guilt. It was rumoured that the reason these media outlets, which had strongly supported the Freedom Convoy, chose to steer clear of the Coutts matter was due to the seriousness of the charges and feeling it might reflect badly on the convoy as a whole. A pretty weak excuse, if that’s the case, but what is stopping them now?

Chris Carbert Tony Olienick

Of course there are the other two men that are still in custody, Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick. What evidence does the Crown have against these men that they didn’t have against Morin and Lysak? There are rumours afoot that Carbert may also be taking a plea deal. However that rumour has since been dispelled and Carbert, along with Olienick is anxious to prove his innocence, for as long as it may take. Olienick is the only one of the four who does not have children, which may have been a huge incentive for Morin and Lysak to take a deal after having already a missed two years of the children’s lives. Tony and Chris C. are both men of deep faith, which has helped them endure their incarceration with a certain type of serenity.

Maxine Bernier, leader of the People’s Party of Canada, likely the only political figure in Canada who has spoken to any of these men and believes in their innocence, posted on X that he had spoken to Olienick since the release of Morin and Lysak. In his post he said, “Tony told me he’s willing to stay in jail for as long as it takes until the trial happens and the truth is revealed.” Tony has expressed this sentiment on other occasions as well. Whether he remains committed to that, again, remains to be seen. As the only politician to comment on this affair, Bernier also posted on X'; “I am now convinced the whole thing (Coutts arrests) was a false flag operation set up by the RCMP to give Trudeau another pretext to unconstitutionally invoke the Emergencies Act. The level of corruption in this affair is mind-boggling. The Trudeau regime will go down in history as one of the most corrupt and tyrannical in Canadian history.” 

Whether Bernier is right about this, we don’t know, and unfortunately we may never know unless the media in this country, gets backbone and ends this conspiracy of silence of the Coutts Four and starts asking some hard questions of the Trudeau government, the judiciary, the Crown and the RCMP. Because the current media conspiracy of silence is speaking louder than words.

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It is good news to hear that Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak, two of the Coutts Four are finally free after spending over 700 days in remand custody, often in horrific conditions. Jerry Morin spent over 70 days in solitary confinement over no fault of his own. These are two of the four men who were charged with conspiracy to murder police, at the border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta in support of the Freedom Convoy protesting COVID 19 mandates imposed by governments. It is important to remember the Liberals have maintained that RCMP’s uncovering of this ‘conspiracy’ plot was the reason they invoked the Emergencie Act during the Freedom Convoy. Yet now two members of this ‘conspiracy’ have been found not guilty of it.

Most media headlines you will see regarding their release will read something along the lines that these two men plead guilty to weapons charges in order to gain their freedom. Some media will be dishonest and misleading as is this headline by Calgary CTV News. Note they don’t bother to mention they pleaded guility to lesser charges.

Most other media headlines do mention they pleaded guilty to gun charges, so they can still sound ominous and dangerous. Funny how, suddenly, the Coutts Four are back in the news, while the entire media regime in Canada ignored their plight for the past two years. That is with the exception of some independent, or citizen journalists, like @BezirganMocha, who has been covering their case from the beginning and Gord Magill who has written numerous articles on the men for the American magazine Newsweek including his most recent one, regarding this new development. Magill also recently appeared on the Tucker Carlson Network (TCN), to plead their case, among other things.

There was also a private citizens movement Political Prisoners of Alberta that have been advocating for these men for the past two years.

As for the charges these men pleaded guilty to, they too are questionable at best, and certainly not serious enough to warrant the time they served and the conditions they endured while in remand. Jerry Morin pleaded guilty to conspiracy to a traffic firearm—a firearm — but actually never did ‘traffic’ it, apparently only ‘agreed’ to. Christopher Lysak pleaded guilty to possession of a loaded restricted firearm in an unauthorized place. It should be noted that he had a legal permit to possess the restricted firearm—the charge strictly pertains to the fact that it was loaded. He did not have it physically on his person—it was found in his trailer — parked on private property — that was raided by the RCMP. Both men have been sentenced to ‘time served’ meaning their time in remand, which is multiplied by one and half because of the harsher conditions in remand, will amount to some 3 1/2 years of ‘time served’. A much longer sentence than most first offenders would receive, as both men are, on such charges.

POEC Commissioner, Justice Paul Rouleau.

Given the political implications of this case, including accusations of prosecutorial misconduct that were never made public or addressed, and that the Coutts Four drama was the primary reason Justice Paul Rouleau, Commissioner for the Public Order Emergencies Commission (POEC) ruled the government was justified in invoking the Act there are a lot of questions that still need to be answered with this development. For instance, why did the Crown offer these plea deals? In most cases the Crown only does this when they realize they don’t have a strong enough case to prove the charges the accused face—in this case — conspiracy to commit murder of police. Did it take them two years to figure that out? What real evidence do the RCMP who investigated this case have? It is also interesting that this plea deal was reached just a little over a week after a Federal Court ruled the Trudeau government’s invocation of the Emergencies Act was illegal. It feels like the house of cards the Liberals built around using these men to justify invoking the Act is crumbling card by card.

There needs to be a full investigation to answer the preceding questions as well as how men can be held without bail for two years with essentially no trial, on what appears to have been weak evidence on the serious charge of ‘conspiracy to murder police’ only to finally be released on gun charges that never would amount to spending that amount of time in jail.

There is still the question about other two men, who remain in remand custody, Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick and still facing the consiracy charge. Olienick has just obtained new legal counsel, so what their future holds remains to be seen. There are the other nine people who were also charged in connection with this ‘conspiracy to committ murder’ scenario the RCMP said they had ‘uncovered’. Do these developments affect them? One of those charged was Jerry Morin’s wife, Jacelyn Martin.

David David Freiheit, who on his podcast goes by Viva Frei, has also been covering the Coutts Four and he has a lot to say and a lot of questions to ask about what has just happened. He was once a practicing lawyer in Canada, so what he has to say is worth a listen

https://twitter.com/thevivafrei/status/1755017892771332296

The government, the courts and the Crown have a lot to answer for in this case. If they will ever be held accountable is difficult to say given the current political climate we are living in. Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are currently in the middle of one of the longest, most ridiculous and likely most expensive trials for mischief charges in the history of this country. If found guilty they could be facing up to ten years in prison. There are a number of people who were acquitted of charges brought against them for their participation in the convoy who are now having their acquittals overturned.

It has over two years since the Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa bringing hope and stirring many Canadians out of the darkness of that was the COVID regime. They were slandered by the media and the government, who ultimately crushed them by invoking the Emergencies Act. But that wasn’t enough, those who made it happen or participated in it are still being persecuted by this government—primarily in the courts — and it needs to stop. Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak may finally be free, but they will bear the mental and physical scars of what was done to them for the rest of their lives. And there are still the other two men to think about. This is something that should never to happen to anyone who decides to protest their government in a free and democratic country. And this government needs to be held accountable and answer for that.

With the Federal Court finding that Trudeau’s use of the Emergencies Act to crush the Freedom Convoy was illegal and unconstitutional many supporters of the Coutts Four are hopeful the decision might lead to the freedom and exoneration of these men. Chris Carbert, Chris Lysak, Jerry Morin and Tony Olienick, have spent almost two years in custody at several Alberta remand centres, after being charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police officers (RCMP) during the Coutts border blockade protest in support of the Freedom Convoy.

Their trial, originally set for June of 2023, over a year after they were charged and denied bail, has been delayed with motions, late disclosure of evidence by the Crown and accusations of further prosecutorial misconduct, is now set for May 2024! This means they will have spent almost two and half years in custody, without having been found guilty of any crime by the time they go to trial. So, naturally their supporters, and the men themselves, are hoping and likely even praying that this decision might have some impact on their case. And the answer to that, unfortunately, is not clear cut.

So what exactly did Federal Court Justice Richard Mosely exactly say about the Coutts situation when rendering his judgement that the Liberal government overstepped its bounds when it invoked the Act? Because it was the Coutts matter that the government claimed to have been the catalyst for its decision to invoke the Act. It was also what Justice Paul Rouleau, who oversaw the Public Order Emergencies Commission (POEC) Inquiry viewed as providing the justification for the government to invoke the Act — much to the Liberal’s delight.

Justice Mosely, however, saw things differently. To put this into context, we have to go back to that Inquiry and the testimony of then Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino. He told the POEC that on February 13, 2022, he was advised by RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki that there were likely armed protesters at the border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta. This prompted Mendicino to relay that information to the government’s Incident Response Group (IRG) on the afternoon of that same day. Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had convened the IRG, composed of senior government ministers and officials, just days earlier, on February 10th, to deal with the convoy demonstration in Ottawa and the border blockades that were occurring around the country in support of the Ottawa protest. 

Mendicino brought this information to the IRG, because, according to his testimony at the POEC, “It underlined to me that there was a hardened cell of individuals, armed to the teeth with lethal firearms, who possessed a willingness to go down with the cause. And if that operation to arrest those individuals did not go effeciently… that it might have created a chain reaction elsewhere, because there were past reports about the presence of guns. My worry, my real fear, was that had that operation not gone down peacefully, that it might have sparked other gun violence across the country. “Lives literally hung in the balance… we were potentially seeing an escalation of serious violence. It was a threshold moment for me.”

If you think these statements by the former Public Safety Minister are somewhat hyperbolic, you would be right. While it isn’t clear just how detailed the information was that Lucki had relayed to Mendicino, we only know how he interpreted it based on his testimony at the POEC. But taking a comment that there was a likelihood that some protesters at Coutts were possibly armed, and ramping that up to a ‘hardened cell of individuals armed to the teeth’, and lives hanging in the balance,” does seem a little over the top.

It would appear that Justice Mosely might have thought that as well, because he certainly didn’t see it as the ‘threshold moment’ that Mendicino believed it was. He actually explicitly rejected the idea the Coutts situation met the threshold to invoke the Act. “The potential for serious violence, or being able to say there was no potential for serious violence, was, of course, a valid reason for concern. But in my view, it did not satisfy the test required to invoke the Act, particularly as there was no evidence of a similar hardened cell elsewhere in the country, only speculation,” he wrote.  He further added; “While I agree that … the situation was critical and required an urgent resolution by governments, the evidence, in my view, does not support the conclusion that it could not have been effectively dealt with under other laws of Canada, as it was in Alberta, or that it exceeded the capacity or authority of a province to deal with it,” 

Judge Mosely didn’t see the developments at Coutts as something that warranted the use of the Emergencies Act. Those developments: the seizure of a cache of weapons — apparently belonging to the Coutts Four — although that’s never been made clear; and the arrests of 14 people, including the Coutts Four — the only ones charged with conspiracy to murder police, from Mosely’s perspective, could have and were dealt with by the province, on its own—before the government invoked the Act.

As the men were charged under the Criminal Code, before the Emergencies Act was invoked, Mosely’s finding that the use of the Act illegal is likely have little impact on the Coutt’s Four’s situation—I am sorry to conclude. On the otherhand, the fact the the Liberal government has already said they will appeal Mosely’s ruling might. According to my research the appeals process in Canada takes anywhere from six to eight months but it can also take more than a year before the process is complete and the court renders a decision.

Pending any further delays the Coutts Four’s trial is set to start in May 2024, and could also be a lengthy process. But for argument’s sake, let’s say they are found not guilty while the government’s appeal process is still underway. Could that verdict serve as a further endorsement of Mosely’s ruling that the government didn’t meet the threshold to invoke the Act, which might negatively impact the outcome of their appeal. On the other hand, if they are found guilty, might that verdict assist the Liberals in their appeal? Could it give them grounds to argue that given the ‘guilt’ of these men has now been proven ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ — they were justified in invoking the Act. It might be a shakey argument, but don’t put anything past the Trudeau government to try and make that happen. Of course much of this is dependent on the timing of the appeal and the trial. But, government lawyers are masters at dragging out cases — as the Crowns in both the Coutts trial and the ongoing trial of Freedom Convoy organizers Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have proven.

I am hoping that this will have no bearing on the trial in any way— if the trial of the Coutts Four proceeds. But, the Trudeau Liberals have proven time and again that they are ruthless and will stoop to any level to get what they want. They will gaslight, divide, obfiscate, defame, and even break the law, as it is now found that they did with the Emergencies Act — to save face, get their way and maintain their hold power. They already used these men to justify invoking the Act in the first place, and used them to serve as an example to others who dare cross this government, and the Prime Minister, in particular. With an election looming and so much of what’s left of its political credibility tied to declaring the Emergencies Act, whose to say the Liberals won’t use them again.

In the last week or so I have noticed a huge increase in readership of my latest article on the plight of the Coutts Four — the four men who have been in custody in remand centres in Alberta for over 700 days. They have been denied bail numerous times, and have yet to go to trial. I have written a series of articles on how they got there, why they are there, and what the government did to get them there, and why they want to keep them there. They are all now listed in this new section I have created — The Coutts Four Chronicles.