Tirade on Yet Another Example of Media Silence on the Coutts Four

National Post reporter cites Lich/Barber trial as an example of trial delay problems in Canada, but ignores the Coutts Four

There was an article in the National Post this weekend titled ‘Convoy Trial Rolls On’, with the subheading: Tamara Lich and Chris Barber are on trial for their roles in the 2022 Freedom Convoy. The trial started Sept. 5 and there's still no end in sight. The writer, Joseph Brean is quite correct, a trial that was supposed to take 16 days, tops, is now heading into 2024. When it adjourned for the holidays in late November the trial had gone on for 33 days, with the Crown’s case taking 27 of them. To bring the point home Brean compared it to another trial in Ontario - which took far less time and resulted in the first successful prosecution of a terrorist murder before a jury. He was referring, of course, to the man who, with his truck, mowed down and killed an entire Muslm family being found guilty of first degree murder.

The Canadian justice system maintains that the accused has a right to a speedy trial, but it really has fallen short of delivering on that commitment for quite a number of years. Brean then spent a lot of time focusing on the problem with trial delays in Canada noting: The longstanding problem of systemic complacency in the face of trial delay had grown so bad by 2016 that the Supreme Court set a hard limit of 18 months from charge to end of trial, after which a delay becomes presumptively unfair, and has to be justified. If enough lost days can be blamed on the Crown, an accused can simply walk free, as has happened in several high-profile cases, including crimes of violence, and countless more low profile cases, such as breaches of bail conditions.

He is right about that and it's something the lawyers for both Lich and Barber may consider pursuing at some point.

But Brean goes on to say again that, ‘trial delay has become a spiralling problem in Canada, of which the Ottawa Convoy trial is just the most current example.’ However, Brean seems to have completely missed another glaring and more egregious example of this problem, which, coincidentally is also associated with the Freedom Convoy. This is not to say that the justice system is working well for Ms. Lich and Mr. Barber either, but at least they are not still waiting for their trial while behind bars, like—Jerry Morin, Tony Olienick, Chris Lysak and Chris Carbert—also known as the Coutts Four, in Lethbridge, Alberta.

These four men attended and/or participated in the Coutts border blockade protest in the town of Coutts, Albert in support of the Freedom Convoy when the truckers took to the streets of downtown Ottawa for almost four weeks during the winter of 2022.

All four men were arrested by the RCMP separately, following a series of raids in the Coutts area on February 13th and 14th, and were charged with, among other things, conspiracy to commit murder of police officers—the RCMP. The evidence related to this particular charge remains a mystery, short of a staged photo of the seizure of weapons, and so do much of the court proceedings, particularly given that a Supreme Court ruling issued in October of this year mandated publication bans on all pretrial proceedings in Canada. However, it should be noted that shortly after this plot to ‘murder RCMP’ was announced, along with the release of the photo of the weapons, the Trudeau government invoked the Emergencies Act on the Freedom Convoy, sending riot police into the crowds to clear the streets.

These four men were immediately taken into custody upon their arrests on the 14th of February 2022, in the Coutts area, and have been in custody ever since. They spent months in jail before an actual trial date was even set, for June 12, 2023, meaning once their trial began, they had been in jail for 17 months!

These men are being tried together; at the provincial courthouse in Lethbridge, Alberta, however, their trial–prior to a jury was even selected–became bogged down with pretrial motions and accusations from the defence of late disclosure of evidence on the part of the Crown. The men’s lawyers maintained that the Crown made three serious breaches in the matter of disclosure: failure to provide full disclosure, failure to provide timely disclosure and failure or refusal to respond to additional disclosure requests. Given that the Crown has had 16 months to put its case together, why disclosure of evidence, to which the defence is entitled, is such a problem remains unclear. Such actions by the Crown, however, leads one to believe they are purposely stalling. As well, a number of issues have arisen due to disclosure of evidence, which resulted in the recusal of the chief prosecutor on the trial, but nothing more on the matter can be made public now due to the publication ban on pretrial proceedings.

The reasons for these men not being granted bail also remains obscure and curious, given that in Canada, virtually anyone charged with a crime is likely to receive bail, even those who are chronic repeat offenders, as well as accused murderers. To make matters worse, these men aren't even in an actual prison, they have been held in remand centres which lack many of the amenities that prisons offer. Thus their treatment while in custody has been subpar including being held in isolation for weeks at a time, delays in receiving necessary and in some cases critical medical treatment, and having extreme limitations placed on visitation with family members, including spouses and children. And when they are not being held in isolation and are released into the general population at their respective remand centres* they often find themselves in the company of gang members and people accused of actual violent crimes. 

*Chris Lysak and Chris Carbert are in Lethbridge, Jerry Morin is in Calgary and Tony Olienick is in Medicine Hat.

So, if a reporter wanted to write an article on a major example of a delayed trial and delayed justice, one would think the Coutts four would come to mind. Four men in jail, with no criminal records, for almost two years, in punishing conditions — and have yet to been found guilty of anything, or faced a jury of their peers to plead their cases and clear their names. The Coutts Four should be the poster child for such matters as the right to a speedy trial and trial delay issues. Yet, the media remain silent on their plight. It often causes one to wonder how strong the Crown’s case is. One would think if they had a slam dunk the case would have been over with in a few months. But perhaps, in this case, the process is the punishment.

So I wrote to this reporter to ask him, why when writing an article on trial delays, and using the Lich/Barber Freedom Convoy as an example, he didn’t also include the Coutts Four, who many consider to be Canada’s political prisoners. I will let you know if I ever get an answer.