No Christmas Miracle for the Coutts Four
Four men, who have yet to be found guilty of anything, will spend their second Christmas behind bars and the media remains silent on their plight
As we all get ready to celebrate Christmas and the New Year over the next few days, we all might want to set aside some time to think about the Coutts Four and maybe even say a prayer for them. These four men – Chris Lysak, Chris Carbert, Jerry Morin and Tony Olienick are about to spend their second Christmas behind bars. They all have families, and some have children, who will be missing them again this Christmas. Arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit murder of police (RCMP), as a result of raids carried out by the RCMP during the Coutts border blockade protest, during the Freedom Convoy last Febuary, they are still being held in custody in remand centres in Alberta. They have yet to been found guilty of this charge or anything else, and they have yet to be tried on this charge. This Newsweek article titled Meet the Four Men Who Are Being Held as Political Prisoners in Canada penned by Gord Magill, a Canadian trucker now living stateside provides a very good overview of these men and their plight.
Bail Hearing Adjourned into Next Year
Chris Carbert had thought that, maybe by some miracle, he would be spending Christmas with his family this year. With his bail hearing set for December 20th he, no doubt, had hoped that it would have resulted in his release, but that hope was dashed. The judge, after hearing arguments from both the Crown and the defense, decided to reserve her decision on whether Chris should be released, and adjourned his hearing to January 8th, 2024.
The last time all four men were in court for the continuation of their pre-trial was December 11, 2023, where those proceedings were adjourned until February 5, 2024, due to the resignation of Tony Olienick’s lawyer. This means the next time they all appear in court, they will have been behind bars just nine days short two full years and their actual trial is set for May 2024. Again, due to a publication ban, what took place in the courtroom on December 11, cannot be made public. What the public can know, though, is that when these men have to appear in court in Lethbridge, both Jerry Morin and Tony Olienick must be moved from their remand facilities in Calgary and Medicine Hat, respectively, to travel to the Lethbridge Remand Centre* where they are housed for the duration of their court proceedings at the Lethbridge Courthouse.
*Both Chris’s are housed at the Lethbridge Remand Centre in separate cells
Often Held in Solitary Confinement
During their stay in Lethbridge Jerry and Tony are held in solitary confinement because because the men cannot be kept together with their co-accused. Yet, for reasons unknown Tony Olinieck was not returned to Medicine Hat following the adjournment of their pre-trial on December 11th and continued to be held in solitary confinement in Lethbridge for as many as 18 straight days.
He wasn’t returned to Medicine Hat until Margaret MacKay, also known as Granny MacKay, a woman who has been advocating for and supporting the Coutts Four since they were first arrested and incarcerated, intervened. She posted a plea on the Facebook page—Alberta Political Prisoners—she had created to publicize their cause — asking Canadians everywhere to phone the remand centre in Lethbridge, and to phone the Justice Minister, to plead Olienicks’ case.
Tony Olienick
Tony also has a health issue which requires he take special pro-briotics, which McKay says are no long effective in treating his condition, which also needs to be addressed. By day nineteen, Margaret Mckay was still asking people to make phone calls on Tony’s behalf. Finally he was returned to Medicine Hat.
Had it not been for the efforts of Granny, Tony may well have spent Christmas in solitary confinement!
Where is the media on this, including independent media?
There was no media present to cover Chris’ bail hearing save for the lone independent journalist Mocha Bezirgan who has been reporting on this case from the beginning.
https://twitter.com/BezirganMocha/status/1717269331040670021
And when I say no media, that includes independent media who also chose to give the story a pass – that includes – Rebel News, True North, and the Western Standard, to name a few. It remains a mystery why, these news agencies, who have been fully behind the Freedom Convoy from the beginning, are chosing to ignore the plight of these four men.
In a recent episode of True North Media’s— The Andrew Lawton Show, Lawton, did an ‘Ask Me Anything’ segment and one of the questions asked of him was why True North was not covering the Coutts Four. Lawton’s answer, in my view, skated around the question and did not address the real issues around what is happening to these men. He pretty much defended their not being granted bail given the ‘seriousness of the charge’ maintaining that it is very difficult to people accused of murder to get bail in Canada. Yet these men haven’t been accused of murder of even attempted murder. It is a ‘conspiracy’ charge and conspiracy charges are often ambiguous and difficult to prosecute, and are usually laid by police or the prosecution when evidence is thin.
As well what Lawton said about accused murderers not getting bail is just not the true in Canada, as is borne out by these three cases, all of which occurred in 2023.
Chard Patrick was charged with second degree murder in the death of Arun Vidneswararajah during an altercation outside a bar in Ajax, Ontario, yet he was released on bail.
Muhammand Ashan Naseer who faced multiple attempted murder and firearms charges for allegedly injuring five people in a drive-by shooting, was granted bail. The Justice of the Peace who made the ruling based it on his lack of criminal record, the strength of his release plan, and oh yes, because was from a ‘racialized’ community.
Robert Freeman who was charged with two counts of second degree murder in the shooting deaths of two Chilliwack BC residents was released on bail. The police attributed the murders to an ‘isolated neighbours’ dispute.
Lawton also mentioned that covering a trial is difficult because it requires a news agency to assign a reporter to be in the courtoom everyday. By way of example he noted True North has not sent a reporter the Tamara Lich-Chris Barber trial for that reason. Instead, he said, he has had other independent media, who are covering that trial, on his show to provide updates from time to time. Yet, he has not done this with the Coutts Court, yet he could have had Bezirgan on his show to provide those updates.
Lawton also alluded to a publication ban for this lack of coverage, however, again, he is not being fully forthcoming on this matter either. The initial publication ban that was sought by the defense lawyers related specifically to Information to Obtain (ITO) a search warrant documents which involve a police officer giving information under oath as to what reasons they believe an offence has been committed and the evidence that will be found at the place they want to search. However, ITOs can offer very broad all encompassing information about such evidence that may never be found—in other words they are a bit of a fishing expedition. The defense sought the ban to avoid, what they believed, may be damning information—of potential evidence that might not exist—in the ITOs that could taint the public’s and potential juror’s view of the accused. The ban was granted on the ITOs, but that did not stop the media covering other aspects of the pre-trial proceedings which Bezirgan did. So Lawtons’s using the publication ban to justify not covering the case is disingenuous. The second ban came from a Supreme Court decision banning the publication on all pre-trial proceedings in June of this year, and it was a ruling involving two other court cases, but it still impacts the Coutts Four proceedings.
The bottom line on the Coutts Four and media coverage, is that any reporter can still ask questions about why these men are still being held in custody. They can make public the conditions under which they have been kept in remand which include solitary confinement, substandard food and medical attention, as well as being subject to strip searches whenever they are transported to and from Lethbridge for their court proceedings. They can shine a light on how this type of treatment of any prisoner should not be happening in a democratic country like Canada, yet it is. They can delve into the political elements of this and the fact that the arrest of these four men was what the Trudeau government used to invoke the Emergencies Act on the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa. Yet, very few media are asking questions about this case and the question I have is why.
Is Justin Trudeau Punishing the Coutts Four for his own Crimes?
Possible answers are discussed in this podcast—The Same Drugs—where noted Canadian journalist and writer Megan Murphy interviews Gord Magill who has been covering the plight of the Coutts Four on his postcast the Voice of GOrD and in Newsweek articles for the last two years.
If you feel generous over the holidays you can help these guys out in two ways, donating to help them with their legal fees, and share this article with as many people as you can. Your can also write them, and the instructions for correspondng with them can be found on Granny Margaret McKay’s Facebook Page — Alberta Political Prisoners. Have a Merry Christmas and please do say a prayer for these men.
You know what’s incredible to me, Roxanne, is that utter frauds like Lawton can say this shit with a straight face.
“We don’t have the time or resources to cover this.”
Oh, TNC doesn’t have any money? All that clickbait can’t afford to pay for any principles?
I’ve been doing this on a budget of *zero* dollars; the only time I’ve been paid was by Newsweek, and trust me, one Op-Ed for them doesn’t buy a weeks worth of groceries for my kids.
Lawton and Ezra Levant and all the rest of these fat fucks are afraid of upsetting the Conservative Party, who associate, incorrectly, Coutts with Jeremy Mackenzie, and because Poilievre is a spineless coward, discussion of The Men has been declared verboten, and the cowards who are more interested in Party than Principle have fallen in line.
I have nothing but contempt for any of them.