From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Mark Carney described the Freedom Convoy as an act of ‘sedition’ and advocated for the government to use its power to crush the non-violent protest movement.

Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney refused to elaborate on comments he made in 2022 referring to the anti-mandate Freedom Convoy protest as an act of “sedition” and advocating for the government to put an end to the movement.

“Well, look, I haven’t been a politician,” Carney said when a reporter in Windsor, Ontario, where a Freedom Convoy-linked border blockade took place in 2022, asked, “What do you say to Canadians who lost trust in the Liberal government back then and do not have trust in you now?”

“I became a politician a little more than two months ago, two and a half months ago,” he said. “I came in because I thought this country needed big change. We needed big change in the economy.”

Carney’s lack of an answer seems to be in stark contrast to the strong opinion he voiced in a February 7, 2022, column published in the Globe & Mail at the time of the convoy titled, “It’s Time To End The Sedition In Ottawa.”

In that piece, Carney wrote that the Freedom Convoy was a movement of “sedition,” adding, “That’s a word I never thought I’d use in Canada. It means incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.”

Carney went on to claim in the piece that if “left unchecked” by government authorities, the Freedom Convoy would “achieve” its “goal of undermining our democracy.”

Carney even targeted “[a]nyone sending money to the Convoy,” accusing them of “funding sedition.”

Internal emails from the Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) eventually showed that his definition of sedition were not in conformity with the definition under Canada’s Criminal Code, which explicitly lists the “use of force” as a necessary aspect of sedition.

“The key bit is ‘use of force,’” one RCMP officer noted in the emails. “I’m all about a resolution to this and a forceful one with us victorious but, from the facts on the ground, I don’t know we’re there except in a small number of cases.”

Another officer replied with, “Agreed,” adding that “It would be a stretch to say the trucks barricading the streets and the air horns blaring at whatever decibels for however many days constitute the ‘use of force.’”

The reality is that the Freedom Convoy was a peaceful event of public protest against COVID mandates, and not one protestor was charged with sedition. However, the Liberal government, then under Justin Trudeau, did take an approach similar to the one advocated for by Carney, invoking the Emergencies Act to clear-out protesters. Since then, a federal judge has ruled that such action was “not justified.”

Despite this, the two most prominent leaders of the Freedom Convoy, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, still face a possible 10-year prison sentence for their role in the non-violent assembly. LifeSiteNews has reported extensively on their trial.

From LifeSiteNews

By Jonathon Van Maren

It is difficult not to conclude that he was publicly building the case for what Trudeau would ultimately do: freeze bank accounts, invoke the Emergencies Act, and launch a crackdown. Ironically, a federal justice would conclude, based on a mountain of evidence, that the government crackdown Carney appeared to be advocating did precisely what he accused the convoy protesters of doing: violating the fundamental rights of Canadians.

The Freedom Convoy arrived in Ottawa on January 29, 2022. Two weeks later, on February 14, Justin Trudeau declared the Emergencies Act (which replaced the War Measures Act in 1988); his Public Safety Minister, Marco Mendicino, insisted that law enforcement had requested the measure. Police from all over the country began arriving in Ottawa, and on February 18, they were sent to clear the streets — including a contingent on horseback. I was in Ottawa for the crackdown, and some of the scenes were surreal.

On January 23, 2024, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley ruled that Trudeau’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act was both “unreasonable” and a violation of the rights of Canadians as guaranteed by the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms. He found that the invocation of the act lacked “justification, transparency, and intelligibility,” infringed on freedom of expression, and violated protection against “unreasonable search and seizure” due to the freezing of bank accounts and suppression of protests.

The Trudeau government is appealing this decision, insisting — against all evidence — that the Emergencies Act was essential to restoring peace despite the fact that there was not a single incident of documented violence during the Freedom Convoy. Further to that, Royal Canadian Mounted Police commissioner Brenda Lucki directly contradicted the claims made by Mendicino, stating that law enforcement had not requested the Emergencies Act, a key aspect of the government’s justification for invocation. “There was never a question of requesting the Emergencies Act,” Lucki told the Public Order Emergency Commission bluntly.

Interestingly, one of the early advocates of a crackdown on the Freedom Convoy was … now-Prime Minister Mark Carney. On February 7, a mere week into the protests, Carney penned a furious editorial in the Globe and Mail titled “This is sedition—and it’s time to put an end to it in Ottawa.” He claimed that people were being “terrorized”; that women were “fleeing abuse”; he stated, bluntly, “This is sedition. That’s a word I never thought I’d use in Canada. It means ‘incitement of resistance to or insurrection against lawful authority.’”

Carney went further, writing that although the protest might have been initially peaceful, “by now anyone sending money to the convoy should be in no doubt: You are funding sedition,” and called on the government to “identify those who are prolonging this manufactured crisis and punish them to the full extent of the law.” He opined that donating to the Freedom Convoy amounted to supporting an insurrection, concluding:

It’s time to end the sedition in Ottawa by enforcing the law and following the money … Decisive action must be taken to protect Canadians and our democracy. Our Constitution is based on peace, order and good government. We must live up to this founding principle in order to protect all our freedoms.”

Carney was already a key figure in Trudeau’s circle at this point, and it is difficult not to conclude that he was publicly building the case for what Trudeau would ultimately do: freeze bank accounts, invoke the Emergencies Act, and launch a crackdown. Ironically, a federal justice would conclude, based on a mountain of evidence, that the government crackdown Carney appeared to be advocating did precisely what he accused the convoy protesters of doing: violating the fundamental rights of Canadians.

Carney has kept understandably mum on all this since his leadership race and subsequent victory, although presumably he will be continuing the Trudeau government’s ongoing appeal to overturn the federal ruling that they violated the rights of Canadians. Indeed, for his Chief of Staff, Carney chose … Marco Mendicino, the very cabinet minister who appears to have blatantly lied about law enforcement requesting the Emergencies Act. Ironically, Carney also selected Chrystia Freeland, the minister directly responsible for freezing (at minimum) the bank accounts of hundreds of Canadians, as Minister of Transport.

To state that the Trudeau government violated the fundamental rights of Canadians in cracking down on protesters often rendered desperate by their vaccine mandate policies — which they cynically used as a wedge issue in a (failed) attempted to secure a second majority government — is not a right-wing conspiracy theory. It is the considered opinion of a federal judge that, to date, has not been overturned. Carney appears to be cut from precisely the same cloth — and has surrounded himself with those who carried out the crackdown.

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Jonathon Van Maren

Jonathon’s writings have been translated into more than six languages and in addition to LifeSiteNews, has been published in the National Post, National Review, First Things, The Federalist, The American Conservative, The Stream, the Jewish Independent, the Hamilton Spectator, Reformed Perspective Magazine, and LifeNews, among others. He is a contributing editor to The European Conservative.

His insights have been featured on CTV, Global News, and the CBC, as well as over twenty radio stations. He regularly speaks on a variety of social issues at universities, high schools, churches, and other functions in Canada, the United States, and Europe.

He is the author of The Culture War, Seeing is Believing: Why Our Culture Must Face the Victims of Abortion, Patriots: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Pro-Life Movement, Prairie Lion: The Life and Times of Ted Byfield, and co-author of A Guide to Discussing Assisted Suicide with Blaise Alleyne.

Jonathon serves as the communications director for the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform.