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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

The Worrisome Wave of Politicized Prosecutions

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19 minute read

Unusual punishment: The 2022 truckers’ protest at the Coutts, Alberta border crossing (top) led to charges against four men (bottom left to right), Chris Carbert, Tony Olienick, Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak; Morin and Lysak were held in custody for almost two years while the other two are still in prison. (Sources of photos: (top) The Canadian Press/Jeff Mcintosh; (bottom) CBC)

From the C2C Journal

By Gwyn Morgan

Shaping criminal charges, bail decisions or prison sentences around an accused person’s political or religious beliefs is utterly odious – a hallmark of tinpot tyrannies and totalitarian hellholes. Such practices have no place in any constitutional nation, let alone a mature democracy that presents itself as a model to the world. But that is increasingly the situation in Canada, writes Gwyn Morgan. Comparing the treatment of protesters accused of minor infractions to those of incorrigible criminals who maim and kill, Morgan finds a yawning mismatch that suggests political motivations are increasingly a factor in today’s criminal justice system.

On January 29, 2022, a small convoy of trucks headed down to the U.S. border crossing at Coutts, Alberta to join in the nationwide protests against the Covid-19 vaccine mandate that the Justin Trudeau government had recently imposed on cross-border truckers – the very people Trudeau had previously described as “heroes” for delivering food and other essentials in the depths of the pandemic. Joined by many locals in pickup trucks and farm machinery, the truckers’ border protest turned into a full-scale blockade that would last 17 days. Just as it appeared to be settling into an extended stalemate, heavily armed police tactical teams swooped down upon several locations and arrested 14 protesters, charging four with the ominous crimes of conspiracy to commit murder (of police officers), mischief, a raft of weapons offences and uttering threats. These were bewildering accusations given the overall context of the event.

As the blockade almost instantly dissolved given that none of the protesters wanted to be linked to potentially violent offenders, the four men – Chris Lysak, Jerry Morin, Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick – were locked away. Lysak and Morin spent 723 days – nearly two years – in pre-trial custody, 74 of which Morin was kept in solitary confinement. Finally, after their new lawyer, Daniel Song, filed a Charter of Rights and Freedoms application demanding that the courts re-examine the case, the Crown suddenly accepted a plea deal on much lesser firearms charges. One month ago – on February 6 – Morin and Lysak were abruptly released. But they had already served the equivalent of a typical sentence for a serious crime in Canada – manslaughter or assault, say. Hard-working tradesmen with young families, Morin and Lysak will never get those two years back. Carbert and Olienick remain in prison and still face the full raft of charges; their trial is to begin in May.

Contrast this with the recent case of a mother and daughter – Carolann Robillard and Sara Miller, 11 – who were fatally stabbed in a horrific random attack outside an Edmonton school. Their accused killer, Muorater Arkangelo Mashar, had a long criminal record of assaults, assault with a weapon and robbery; he had been released from custody 18 days prior to the murders. Such events are no longer exceptions in Canada’s criminal justice system. They’re not cases of someone “falling through the cracks” – getting out due to a glitch or individual act of incompetence. They are routine. This is how things are now done in Canada. Vancouver police, for example, catch and release the same criminal offenders over and over, sometimes close to 100 times, because they always make bail.

By contrast, the four Coutts protesters were repeatedly denied bail despite having no criminal records. For this reason, social media users raised the possibility that they were, in effect, political prisoners being persecuted for having stood up so defiantly against the vaccine mandate and embarrassing Trudeau. Just a week or so following their arrests, over 3,000 km away on Parliament Hill, the Trudeau government moved against a peaceful protest that was breaking no significant laws other than, possibly, some municipal noise ordnances and parking bylaws. Police arrested and incarcerated four prominent protesters whom there was no credible basis to imprison and hold without bail. Of the four, Chris Barber was released within a day. Pat King and George Billings, however, were denied bail despite facing only minor mischief charges; they would spend months in jail. Billings eventually pled guilty to one charge and was released, while King’s trial has yet to begin.

Political prisoners: At the Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa (top), police arrested (bottom left to right) Chris Barber, Pat King and George Billings; Barber was released but King and Billings were denied bail despite facing only minor mischief charges. (Sources of photos: (top) Maksim Sokolov (Maxergon), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0; (bottom left) Public Order Emergency Commission; (bottom middle) Calgary Herald; (bottom right) The South Peace News)

The treatment of the fourth prominent protester was especially egregious. The day before police wielding the draconian powers of the federal Emergencies Act moved in to forcibly break up and disperse the Ottawa protesters from Parliament Hill and Wellington Street, they arrested a woman who had journeyed across the country to serve as co-organizer and spokesperson for the protesting truckers. Tamara Lich, a Métis grandmother from Alberta, was criminally charged with “one count each of mischief, intimidation, obstructing a highway and obstructing a police officer, as well as five counts of counselling others to commit those same charges.” It’s hard to imagine how this petite, soft-spoken woman could “obstruct police or intimidate” anyone. Handcuffed between two towering federal police officers, Lich was placed in solitary confinement in a dungeon-like cell with a tiny window 5 metres above her head.

Section 515 of the Criminal Code of Canada covers Judicial Interim Release – the formal term for bail – and states in part: “…the justice shall, unless a plea of guilty by the accused is accepted, make a release order in respect of that offence, without conditions, unless the prosecutor, having been given a reasonable opportunity to do so, shows cause, in respect of that offence, why the detention of the accused in custody is justified or why an order under any other provision of this section should be made.” The Criminal Code also specifies that bail should be granted with the fewest conditions possible and should consider the person’s background, criminal record and any threat their release might pose to the public.

Lich spent two weeks in jail and was then released under strict and stifling bail conditions that went beyond what is typically imposed even on accused bank robbers or murderers, including a prohibition against using social media and orders not to communicate with anyone associated with the convoy. That summer, the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms selected Lich as the 2022 recipient of its annual George Jonas Freedom Award “in recognition of her outstanding dedication to the cause of freedom.” At the awards ceremony in Toronto, Lich was photographed with another person associated with the convoy. She was then rearrested in Alberta, handcuffed and shackled, and flown back to Ottawa. She spent another 30 days in prison before again being released on bail after a different judge ruled that there had been “no significant interaction” at the awards ceremony – though the judge did not strike any of the oppressive bail conditions themselves.

Convoy organizer Tamara Lich, a Métis grandmother from Alberta, was put in solitary confinement on charges of mischief and “intimidation” then released with draconian bail restrictions; she was later re-arrested after a gala in Toronto (right) and sent back to jail for 30 days. (Sources of photos: (left) X; (right) Facebook/Stacey Kauder)

Around the same time, Randall McKenzie, a habitual offender charged with weapons violations and assaulting a police officer, was set free with no conditions other than periodically reporting to his parole officer. On December 27, 2022, Ontario Provincial Police Constable Greg Pierzchala was murdered in an ambush-style attack; McKenzie and his girlfriend stand accused of the horrific crime. Again, such events now occur with sickening regularity. Just three months previously, habitual violent offender Myles Sanderson went on one of Canada’s worse-ever rampages, stabbing 10 people to death, including his own brother, and wounding another 18 on the James Smith Cree Nation in Saskatchewan. Over the years Sanderson had racked up the impossible-sounding total of 125 criminal charges plus numerous parole violations, but had been again let out because a parole board member deemed he “will not present an undue risk to society.”

In stark contrast to the treatment of freedom protesters, hardened criminals such as (left to right) Muorater Arkangelo Mashar, Randall McKenzie and Myles Sanderson have been routinely set free with no enforcement of their bail conditions, and then go on to commit more horrific crimes. (Sources of photos: (left to right) Global NewsThe Hamilton SpectatorCBC)

In contrast to Mashar, McKenzie, Sanderson and many hundreds of other criminals, it is inconceivable that Tamara Lich could be considered a risk to anyone. She has no criminal record. And under Canada’s warped justice system her Indigenous background should have worked to her advantage in providing even lighter than normal treatment. Lich would probably recoil at asking for such a thing, but the Crown and court are obliged to consider it.

All of that went out the window in Lich’s case, however. In opposing bail at one of her several such hearings, Crown Prosecutor Moiz Karimjee told the judge the government might well seek a prison sentence of 10 years – something never previously imposed in Canada for a mischief charge and fully in keeping with sentences for murder, bank robbery or violent sexual assault. It is difficult to avoid concluding that people in high office wanted the court to teach Lich and the others a lesson – and send a message to dissidents across the country.

Whether or not there has been direct political interference, Canada’s justice system is no longer entirely trustworthy. Just two months after the forcible takedown of the Ottawa protests, no less a figure than Richard Wagner, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Canada, described the Freedom Convoy protest as “the beginning of anarchy where some people have decided to take other citizens hostage.” It was a grotesque exaggeration, but it wasn’t all that Canada’s highest-ranked impartial jurist had to say. “Forced blows against the state, justice and democratic institutions like the one delivered by protesters,” he declared, “should be denounced with force by all figures of power in the country.” Who outside a dictatorship even talks that way?

Supreme Court Chief Justice Richard Wagner speaks during a welcoming ceremony, Thursday, October 28, 2021 in Ottawa. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Adrian Wyld

Lich’s trial, together with that of convoy co-organizer Barber, finally began last September in the Ontario Court of Justice. It was expected to finish by mid-October but has been taking much longer. After adjourning in December, it resumed in January but was interrupted again after one day. Further hearings are to be held this week. The completion date is uncertain due to limited court time and the tenacious, tireless defence by the formidable Lawrence Greenspon, which appears to have rattled the prosecution.

Tamara Lich, Pat King, George Billings, Chris Lysak, Jerry Morin, Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick have spent a cumulative total of more than 3,200 days in jail – nearly 9 years – and this total will climb further because two of them remain in prison awaiting trial. Meanwhile, Canada’s bail laws continue to allow violent habitual offenders loose after just a few days in custody, while the parole system leaks like a poisonous sieve.

One of the cornerstones separating a democracy from a dictatorship is the prohibition of government interference in the judicial process. But in 2013, the then-aspiring political leader Justin Trudeau stated, “There is a level of admiration I actually have for China[’s]…basic dictatorship.” Even worse, Trudeau named China as the government he admired most in the world. Since then, Canadians have been given reason to believe he meant this literally.

Punishing dissent: The treatment of the freedom protesters under Justin Trudeau’s government seems disturbingly similar to the behaviour of totalitarian regimes in China, Russia and the former Soviet Bloc. Shown at top, Chinese Christians (left) and Uyghur inmates (right) jailed in China; at bottom, political dissidents in Russia (left) and Kazakhstan (right). (Sources of photos: (top right) The Guardian; (bottom left) Ilya Pitalev/RIA Novosti; (bottom right) Epa-Efe/Igor Kovalenko)

Given the facts at hand, given the Prime Minister’s venomous rhetoric against his opponents, given his repeated ethical lapses, and given that he has interfered in at least one prosecution before, it is hard to escape the conclusion that Lich and the others are political prisoners being persecuted at the behest of the Trudeau government. Whether this is due to key players in the justice system reading the implicit signals and acting accordingly, or due to direct interference, we cannot say – and might never know for sure. Either way, Canadians should be revolted. One thing we do know: news of yet another murder or egregious assault by a violent offender out on bail will come all too soon.

Gwyn Morgan is a retired business leader who was a director of five global corporations.

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Censorship Industrial Complex

Another Mass Grave?

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No. One outrageous lie was quickly discounted, yet another lives on, to the detriment of everybody involved.

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Brian Giesbrecht

The  Kamloops claim didn’t come out of the blue. The TRC’s well-publicized “missing children” wild goose chase thoroughly indoctrinated indigenous communities. It convinced foolish people, like Casimir, Leah Gazan and Kimberley Murray, that thousands of “missing children” had been secretly buried  all across Canada.

“My brother Rufus saw them take all those children and stand them up next to a big ditch, and then the soldiers shot them all and they all fell into that ditch. Some of the kids were still alive and they just poured the dirt in on top of them. Buried them alive.”

This mass murder happened in 1943 — not in Nazi-held Europe, but in Brantford, Ontario.

So, there you have it — the personal story of a residential school “survivor” describing the day the Canadian Army lined up 43 Indian children in front of a residential school at Brantford, Ontario, shot them and dumped their bodies into a mass grave. The May 27, 2021 announcement that the remains of 215 former students of the Kamloops residential school wasn’t the first time that a claim  about sinister residential school deaths and clandestine burials had been made.

This Brantford story is obviously untrue. Any reasonably well-informed person with a lick of sense would know that at a glance.

But that didn’t stop the claim from making the social media rounds for years. According to the fact-check tens of thousands of people have read this bogus claim over the years, and many appear to have believed it completely. In fact, despite the fact checks proving that the claim was entirely false it continues to circulate today.

Both the Kamloops and Brantford claims came basically from the same place — the strange mind of a defrocked United Church Minister, Kevin Annett. It was Annett who created the bogus Brantford claim. In a strange twist, the picture at the top of the page — said to be from Brantford — is actually a photo of the former Kamloops Indian Residential School, as it looked in the 1920s. 

And it was Annett who inspired the TRC’s misguided “missing children/unmarked graves” wild goose chase that, in turn, inspired Chief Rosanne Casimir to make the Kamloops claim. Both claims were equally and obviously false: The Kamloops claim was that the “remains of 215 children were found.” In fact, only radar blips (anomalies) were detected- blips that turned out. to most likely be from previous excavations, and not graves. Casimir and Annett both knew that they were making false claims.

Annett’s bogus claims come from his imaginative reworking of stories of “survivors” that he publicized in his blogs, books, interviews and movies.

His most famous movie is Unrepentant. This movie has been viewed by tens of thousands of Canadians, particularly in indigenous communities, such as the Tk’emlups community at Kamloops.

It has won awards, and been praised by eminent people, such as Noam Chomsky. Despite being every bit as false as the claim that the Canadian army shot 43 indigenous children, it actually convinced Member of Parliament, Gary Merasty, that it was accurate history. It is nothing short of amazing that this highly suggestible MP  was then able to convince the equally gullible, and newly appointed TRC commissioners that there were many thousands of such “missing children”, as Annett alleged.

The TRC commissioners then launched their “missing children/unmarked graves” campaign despite having no mandate from the federal government to do so. (Independent researcher, Nina Green, describes this in detail here.)

You see, the  Kamloops claim didn’t come out of the blue. The TRC’s well-publicized “missing children” wild goose chase thoroughly indoctrinated indigenous communities. It convinced foolish people, like Casimir, Leah Gazan and Kimberley Murray, that thousands of “missing children” had been secretly buried  all across Canada. 

Indigenous people became hooked on these stories.

Annett’s most famous book is his 393 page opus, “Hidden No Longer.” That book introduced the idea that the deaths of these thousands of “missing children” (his estimates range from 50,000 to 250,000, depending on the telling) constituted  genocide. It is absolutely shocking that our MPs actually voted to condemn Canada of genocide based essentially on Kevin Annett’s bogus claims.

Based on those same bogus claims Annett was hired by the Brantford Mohawk community in 2011 to dig up the graves that he claimed existed in the apple orchard area of their residential school. According to Annett, these were the graves of indigenous students who had been secretly killed and buried in the apple orchard at the school, with the forced help of fellow students. 

Sound familiar? It should. That was essentially the same grisly tale repeated by Chief Rosanne Casimir years later in Kamloops. (See above.)

Except that the wiser folks within the Brantford Mohawk community twigged on to Annett’s tricks. And when Annett was found on the streets of Toronto, waving around chicken bones, and pretending that they were the bones of children he had unearthed at Brantford, the Mohawk elders came together and publicly denounced Annett as a fraud at a community meeting.  They then banished him from their community. 

Unfortunately, Casimir became a useful idiot for Annett — just as the gullible TRC commissioners did — and no such leadership has yet come forward from the wiser elements within the Kamloops indigenous community. Those folks are silent, while the more vocal contingent are still sticking to their story that the  soil anomalies are the “remains of 215 children,” and not what they almost certainly are — 1924 septic excavations. 

So, the questions should be asked: Is the claim that the Canadian army shot 43 indigenous children, and dumped them in a mass grave, any more or less believable than the claim that priests killed and secretly buried 215 children at Kamloops, (or any of the copycat claims that followed it?)

What is it about that Mohawk claim that gives it appeal to only the most gullible among us, while the equally improbable Kamloops claim is still taken seriously by so many people?

On the surface, both claims are outrageous, and have no real evidence to support them. Quite the contrary, every Canadian history book ever written is cogent evidence  that both stories are false. But the Mohawk claim was dismissed as the nonsense it obviously was, while the Kamloops claim lives on.

At least part of the answer to those questions appears to be in the response of the government in power, and the media to the claims. If the Brantford claim had been met by a prime minister who immediately ordered that flags be lowered, and offered hundreds of millions of dollars to any other indigenous communities who wanted to make similar claim, no doubt that Brantford claim would have been taken seriously.

Or, if the Brantford claim had been made in a time when a highly ideological CBC would ask no questions, and blindly promote the claim, the results might have been entirely different. As it is, the Brantford claim died a merciful death, while the equally specious Kamloops genocide claim still languishes like a stinking albatross around the neck of every Canadian.

Although the international community is increasingly broadcasting the obvious fact that the Kamloops claim is bogus Canada’s media remains asleep. That is not likely to change until leadership changes in Ottawa, and at the CBC. Pierre Pollievre, when questioned on this topic, stated clearly that he stands for historical truth, accuracy, and a full investigation into all questions pertaining to claims about residential school deaths. Hopefully, that means that excavation and a full inquiry will follow.

But Tk’emlups indigenous elders better wake up, like the Mohawk elders did. You are not doing your communities a favour by letting politicians and journalists treat you like children, by pretending to believe your bizarre claims. These false claims are already doing great damage.

Fortunately, there are many thoughtful indigenous people who do not blindly accept the claims about murderous priests and secret burials.

Here is one such wise indigenous person. He is a priest, and he is willing to do what our federal government and our CBC failed to do from the beginning namely to intelligently discuss the issue.

Thoughtful people like this need to be involved in a full investigation that will clear the air about the Kamloops claim, and get Canada back on track.

Brian Giesbrecht, retired judge, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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Frontier Centre for Public Policy

Hungarian Revolution of 1956: A Valiant Effort to Overthrow Communist Rule

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Civilians wave Hungary’s national flag from a captured Soviet tank in Budapest’s main square during the anti-communist uprising of October 1956. AP Photo

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

By Gerry Bowler

For a time, Moscow seemed willing to accept change in Hungary, but when Nagy announced that his country would leave the Warsaw Pact and become neutral in the Cold War, that was a bridge too far for Khrushchev.

After World War II ended in the summer of 1945, the Soviet Red Army found itself to be in possession of Eastern Europe. In the next few years, the USSR extinguished the young democracies in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia, while imposing Stalinist governments on autocracies such as Bulgaria and Hungary. With Marxist regimes taking over in eastern Germany, and Albania and Yugoslavia as well, Winston Churchill spoke truly when he said that “from Stettin the Baltic to Trieste in the Adriatic, an iron curtain has descended across the continent.”

In many of these countries, there was considerable resentment over the Russian occupation. In the Baltic republics, Romania, Croatia, Belarus, Poland, and Ukraine, doomed anti-Soviet guerilla movements with names like the “Forest Brothers,” the “Cursed Soldiers,” or “Crusaders,” fought underground wars that\ lasted for years. In June 1953 in East Berlin, workers rose up in protests against their communist masters, sparking a short-lived rebellion that spread to hundreds of towns before being crushed by Russian tanks. The most serious of these insurrections was the Hungarian Revolution of 1956. By 1956, there were stirrings of discontent in the Hungarian People’s Republic. Under the state control of industry, forced agricultural collectivization, and the shipping of produce to the Soviet Union, the economy was in bad shape. The supply of consumer goods was low and standards of living were dropping. Secret police surveillance of the population was harsh, while many Hungarians resented the suppression of religion and the mandatory instruction of the Russian language in schools. As news leaked out about Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev’s denunciation of Stalin in the so-called “Secret Speech,” hopes grew that reform of the communist system was possible.

Marxist intellectuals began to form study circles to discuss a new path for Hungarian socialism, but their cautious proposals were suddenly overtaken by demands for change by young people. On Oct. 22, 1956, students at the Technical University of Budapest drew up a list of demands for change  known as the “Sixteen Points.” They included free elections, a withdrawal of Soviet troops, free speech, and an improvement in economic conditions.

On the afternoon of the next day, these points were read out to a crowd of 20,000 who had gathered at the statue of a leader of the Hungarian rebellion of 1848. By 6 p.m., when the students marched on the Parliament Building, the crowd had grown to around 200,000 people. This alarmed the government, and later that evening Communist Party leader Erno Gero took to the radio to condemn the Sixteen Points. In reaction, mobs tore down an enormous statue of Stalin.

People surround the decapitated head of a huge statue of Josef Stalin in Budapest during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956. Daniel Sego (second L), who cut off the head, is spitting on the statue. Hulton Archive/Getty Images

On the night of Oct. 23, crowds gathered outside the state broadcaster, Radio Budapest, to demand that the Sixteen Points be sent out over the air. The secret police fired on the protesters, killing a number of them. This enraged the demonstrators who set fire to police cars and seized arms from military depots. Army units ordered to support the secret police rebelled and joined the protest. The government floundered; on the one hand, they called Soviet tanks into Budapest; on the other hand, they appointed Imre Nagy, seen as a popular reformer, as prime minister.

As barricades were being erected by protesters and shots were being exchanged with secret police units, Nagy was negotiating with the Soviets who agreed that they would withdraw their tanks from the capital. Over the next few days, the rebellion spread; factories were seized, Communist Party newspapers and headquarters were attacked, and known communists and secret police agents were murdered. The new prime minister released political prisoners and promised the establishment of democracy, with freedom of speech and religion.

For a time, Moscow seemed willing to accept change in Hungary, but when Nagy announced that his country would leave the Warsaw Pact and become neutral in the Cold War, that was a bridge too far for Khrushchev. Fearing the collapse of the entire Soviet bloc, he made plans for an invasion of Hungary. By Nov. 3, the Red Army had surrounded Budapest, and the next day heavy fighting erupted as armoured columns entered the city. Some units of the Hungarian army fought back, joined by thousands of civilians, but the end was predictable. After a week of battles, with over 20,000 dead and wounded, resistance crumbled. A new Soviet-approved government under János Kádár purged the army and Communist Party, arrested thousands, and executed rebel leaders including Nagy.

Hundreds of thousands of refugees fled, many of them settling in Canada and the United States. World condemnation of the USSR was strong; critics of the Soviets included many communists in the West who resigned their party membership. Not until the collapse of the Soviet hold on Eastern Europe in 1989 did Hungarians get another taste of freedom.

Published in the Epoch Times.

Gerry Bowler, historian, is a Senior Fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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