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The legal professionals concerned within the legal trial of 2 convoy protest organizers are after all confronting the central query of the case: whether or not or now not the 2022 protest that gridlocked Canada’s nationwide capital for weeks used to be a felony expression of Constitution rights.

Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, two of probably the most distinguished leaders of the protest, have maintained that their most effective function right through the convoy used to be to arrange and oversee a calm and felony demonstration and that they inspired other people to practice the regulation.

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Their legal professionals informed court docket time and again this week that the suitable to non violent meeting and unfastened expression used to be safe beneath the Canadian Constitution of Rights and Freedoms. The Crown, alternatively, argues that rights have limits and {that a} protest isn’t felony simply because it’s non violent.

Barber and Lich are each charged with mischief and intimidation, they usually additionally face more than one fees that contain counselling others to wreck the regulation.

They helped to convey 1000’s of huge rigs and different automobiles to Ottawa, accompanied via large crowds, as a part of remaining yr’s sprawling, disruptive protest towards COVID-19 public well being restrictions, vowing to not stand down till the government complied with their calls for.

On Feb. 14, 2022, after weeks of protests within the shadow of Parliament Hill, at the side of a number of an identical, however unaffiliated protests at Canada-U. S. border crossings and provincial legislatures, the government proclaimed a public order emergency. It used to be the primary invocation of the Emergencies Act because it changed the Conflict Measures Act in 1988.

Barber’s legal professional, Diane Magas, learn the emergency proclamation aloud to the court docket Wednesday.

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“We do additional specify that the particular transient measures that can be important for coping with the emergency, as expected via the Governor in Council, are measures to keep watch over or restrict any public meeting — instead of lawful advocacy, protest or dissent,” Magas recited.

“That’s an overly key issue, in my submission,” she informed the pass judgement on.

Magas made the argument in line with the Crown’s allegation that Barber and Lich labored in combination so intently that they must be thought to be co-conspirators, which might imply proof towards one among them would observe to each.

The defence says the Crown must end up they conspired to wreck the regulation, fairly than to arrange a calm and lawful protest.

“There isn’t one scintilla of proof, both direct or oblique, to signify a not unusual illegal goal” involving Barber, Magas informed court docket.

Within the Crown’s view, neither the protest nor the movements of Lich and Barber had been lawful, Crown lawyer Siobhain Wetscher stated, an remark that amused Ontario court docket Justice Heather Perkins-McVey.

“I do know,” Perkins-McVey stated with fun. “That’s why we’re right here.”

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Wetscher’s co-counsel, Tim Radcliffe, pointed to dozens of pleas via Lich and Barber for protesters to stay non violent, unified and loving. The ones statements had been corresponding to asking other people to stay non-violent, however to not stay lawful, he stated.

“That used to be the plea to these at the bandwagon,” Radcliffe stated.

The defence hasn’t fastened any constitutional demanding situations, which makes the query of whether or not the protest used to be a constitutionally safe type of expression or meeting inappropriate, Wetscher added. “We’re coping with legal offences.”

Radcliffe stated all Perkins-McVey needed to imagine used to be whether or not streets had been blocked and assets used to be interfered with, and whether or not Lich and Barber had been celebration to these crimes.

The Crown is predicted to proceed its argument Thursday, however has now not but indicated after they consider the alleged conspiracy started or who used to be concerned but even so Barber and Lich.

Magas took the court docket thru a timeline of occasions all the way through the convoy protest, together with examples of instances Barber inspired protesters to practice the recommendation of police and depart downtown Ottawa so as to arrange camp out of doors the town.

In a single personal textual content change, a protester informed Barber that they had arrived at a staging space on Coventry Highway all the way through the second one week of the protest.

“OK, keep there or cross to go out 88,” Barber spoke back, referencing a rural staging space about 45 kilometres out of doors Ottawa. Each staging spaces have been really useful via police.

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