The fact that none of the four men accused of the most serious criminal charge laid during the Freedom Convoy blockades — conspiring to kill police officers — were convicted of that offence is further evidence the Trudeau government overreacted in invoking the Emergencies Act.
Those charges, laid during the highway blockade in Coutts, Alberta in early 2022, were repeatedly cited to justify the invoking of the EA, both by the Trudeau government and by the official inquiry into the government’s decisions to do so headed by Justice Paul Rouleau.
Rouleau called it a “concrete manifestation” of the need for the EA in his report last year.
On the other hand, federal court Justice Richard Mosley ruled earlier this year on an application by the Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Canadian Constitution Foundation that the government’s invocation of the EA was unreasonable and infringed on the Charter rights of the protesters.
That included in Coutts, he said, where the protest was resolved without violence and charges were laid under the Criminal Code, without the need for the EA.
On Friday, an Alberta jury found Anthony Olienick and Chris Carbert not guilty of conspiring to kill police.
They were convicted on charges of mischief and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose. Olienick was also convicted of possessing a pipe bomb.
The pair were arrested after police found a cache of weapons, ammunition and body armour near the blockade at the Canada-U. S. border crossing in 2022.
In February, Christopher Lysak and Jerry Morin who were also charged with conspiracy to kill police, pleaded guilty to lesser offences and were released in light of the amount of time they had already served in custody awaiting trial.
Again, all of the charges the four men were accused of, convicted of, or pled guilty to were laid through the normal use of the Criminal Code that had nothing to do with the Trudeau government’s decision to invoke the EA.
These kinds of charges are laid across Canada all the time without the need for the EA, which is supposed to be invoked only when there is no other effective alternative.
Future Canadian governments need to take that standard seriously, not invoke the EA when it isn’t needed.