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Freedom Convoy lawyers ask for dismissal of Ottawa citizens’ $290 million class-action suit

Published

1 year ago

7 minute read

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

Lawyers representing Freedom Convoy leaders filed an application to dismiss the lawsuit as a ‘Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP) – a lawsuit designed to silence the expression of peaceful protesters.’

A $290 million class-action lawsuit filed by disgruntled Ottawa residents against the Freedom Convoy leaders is designed to “silence” the leaders’ right to free “expression,” say their lawyers, adding that they have applied to have the case dismissed.

According to a Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) press release from yesterday, lawyers representing Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and others, have filed an application to dismiss the lawsuit as a “Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP)–a lawsuit designed to silence the expression of peaceful protesters.” The lawyers are expected to be in court on Thursday, December 14, to argue their case.

“The fundamental Charter freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly must be vigorously protected and defended, whether they are attacked directly by government or indirectly through a misguided civil action,” noted JCCF President John Carpay regarding the application to dismiss the lawsuit.  

In February 2022, the Freedom Convoy leaders were hit with the lawsuit, which originally started at $9.8 million but then ballooned to $290 million. The class-action lawsuit was filed by Ottawa civil servant Zexi Li on February 4, 2022, along with Geoffrey Delaney, Happy Goat Coffee Company, and a local union. It names plaintiffs who have businesses or were working in the city’s downtown core during the Freedom Convoy.  

According to the February 17, 2022, filing, all the plaintiffs are being represented by Ottawa litigation lawyers Champ & Associates. 

Included in the defendants lists besides Barber and Lich are Benjamin Dichter, as well as dozens of others. The lawsuit seeks damages against the peaceful protestors for “allegedly causing a nuisance. This lawsuit also seeks damages from citizens who donated to the peaceful protest,” noted the JCCF. 

Li was instrumental in having a horn-honking injunction placed against the Freedom Convoy during the protest.

According to the JCCF, anti-SLAPP legislation serves “to protect defendants against ‘Strategic Lawsuits Against Public Participation’ (SLAPP)–lawsuits designed to silence a defendant’s freedom of expression through threats of damages or costs.” 

“Anti-SLAPP motions are designed to end such lawsuits and are available to a defendant in any proceeding against them. Once an anti-SLAPP motion has been filed, the defendant must demonstrate that the proceeding against them arises from their expression that ‘relates to a matter of public interest’,” noted the JCCF. 

Should the defendant demonstrate that their expression does relate to a “matter of public interest,” then the plaintiff “must then demonstrate that their lawsuit has ‘substantial merit,’ and that the defendant has no valid defense.” 

At this point, the JCCF notes that a judge must then “weigh the importance of the expression at stake against the importance of the plaintiff’s allegations of harm.” 

‘Factual and legal weaknesses’  

JCCF lawyers will be in court tomorrow at the Ontario Superior Court of Justice regarding their Anti-SLAPP motion and say they will argue that the proceedings against “Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and others” do, in fact, “arise from their expression.” 

“Donating to and participating in the Freedom Convoy amounted to an expression of support for the protest, and of disagreement with the Government of Canada’s response to COVID–matters of public interest,” noted the JCCF. 

“Further, lawyers argue that Zexi Li’s class-action lawsuit contains factual and legal weaknesses; it is not obvious that the proceeding against the defendants has ‘substantial merit.’ Finally, lawyers argue that the defendants do have valid defenses and that the value of the expression at issue outweighs the allegations of nuisance against them.” 

According to lawyer James Manson, Li’s lawsuit engages the “very purpose that ‘anti-SLAPP’ legislation was designed to address: an attempt to silence peaceful expression, and the right of defendants to participate in public debate.” 

Lawyers will argue that the “plaintiffs’ entire class-action lawsuit is, in fact, a SLAPP action disguised as a nuisance claim and that the lawsuit is merely intended to punish the defendants for participating in the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest.” 

The JCCF said that if they are successful, all or part of Li’s class action lawsuit will be dismissed.  

Lawsuit comes amidst Freedom Convoy leaders’ trial  

Currently, Lich and Barber are on trial in an Ottawa court to argue against Crown charges relating to their involvement with the Freedom Convoy. The trial is now on pause until the new year.  

The Crown has been trying to prove that Lich and Barber had somehow influenced the protesters’ actions through their words as part of a co-conspiracy. Lich and Barber’s lawyers however reject this notion.  

It got to the point where Justice Heather Perkins-McVey warned Li she must stop using the term “occupation” as a descriptor for the protest or face disciplinary action.  

Li, in February of 2022, had commended Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s refusal to meet the truckers, telling CTV News at the time that the truckers “cannot be negotiated with” and that Ottawa downtown residents “have trauma” and deserve “reparations” for having been disturbed.  

In early 2022, the Freedom Convoy saw thousands of Canadians from coast to coast come to Ottawa to demand an end to COVID mandates in all forms. Despite the peaceful nature of the protest, Trudeau’s government enacted the Emergencies Act on February 14. 

During the clear-out of protesters after the EA was put in place, one protester, an elderly lady, was trampled by a police horse, and one conservative female reporter was beaten by police and shot with a tear gas canister. 

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Mark Carney refuses to clarify 2022 remarks accusing the Freedom Convoy of ‘sedition’

Published on April 1, 2025

By

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.”

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.

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COVID-19

17-year-old died after taking COVID shot, but Ontario judge denies his family’s liability claim

Published on March 30, 2025

By

From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

Ontario Superior Court Justice Sandra Antoniani ruled that the Department of Health had no ‘duty of care’ to individual members of the public in its pandemic response.

An Ontario judge dismissed a liability claim from a family of a high schooler who died weeks after taking the COVID shot.

According to a published report on March 26 by Blacklock’s Reporter, Ontario Superior Court Justice Sandra Antoniani ruled that the Department of Health had no “duty of care” to a Canadian teenager who died after receiving a COVID vaccine.

“The plaintiff’s tragedy is real, but there is no private law duty of care made out,” Antoniani said.

“There is no private law duty of care to individual members of the public injured by government core policy decisions in the handling of health emergencies which impact the general population,” she continued.

In September 2021, 17-year-old Sean Hartman of Beeton, Ontario, passed away just three weeks after receiving a Pfizer-BioNtech COVID shot.

After his death, his family questioned if health officials had warned Canadians “that a possible side effect of receiving a Covid-19 vaccine was death.” The family took this petition to court but has been denied a hearing.

Antoniani alleged that “the defendants’ actions were aimed at mitigating the health impact of a global pandemic on the Canadian public. The defendants deemed that urgent action was necessary.”

“Imposition of a private duty of care would have a negative impact on the ability of the defendants to prioritize the interests of the entire public, with the distraction of fear over the possibility of harm to individual members of the public, and the risk of litigation and unlimited liability,” she ruled.

As LifeSiteNews previously reported, Dan Hartman, Sean’s father, filed a $35.6 million lawsuit against Pfizer after his son’s death.

However, only 103 claims of 1,859 have been approved to date, “where it has been determined by the Medical Review Board that there is a probable link between the injury and the vaccine, and that the injury is serious and permanent.”

Thus far, VISP has paid over $6 million to those injured by COVID injections, with some 2,000 claims remaining to be settled.

According to studies, post-vaccination heart conditions such as myocarditis are well documented in those, especially young males who have received the Pfizer jab.

Additionally, a recent study done by researchers with Canada-based Correlation Research in the Public Interest showed that 17 countries have found a “definite causal link” between peaks in all-cause mortality and the fast rollouts of the COVID shots as well as boosters.

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