Two of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's political prisoners were released yesterday after two years in custody. In what is the biggest judicial scandal in recent Canadian history, the Trudeau government arrested four men from Coutts, Alberta, known as the Coutts Four, for participating in the Truckers Freedom Convoy. The men were held without bail on trumped up charges of "conspiracy to murder police officers." Two of those men, Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak, now walk free, having plead guilty to lesser gun charges. The other two, Chris Carbert, Anthony Olienick, will resume pre-trial hearings on Feb. 20.
The plea deals emerged just two weeks after a federal court ruled that Trudeau's invocation of the Emergencies Act, used to suspend civil liberties in Canada and quell the nonviolent Trucker's Convoy, were illegal; Trudeau had "violated the fundamental freedoms" set out in Canada's constitution, the court found.
Unfortunately, few Canadians know the extent of the abuse of their rights. Canada's media is completely in the bag for the Trudeau regime. At the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC), an inquest which took place eight months after the Convoy, the largest and most peaceful protest in Canadian history, it was revealed that the media had lied to the Canadian people repeatedly about what went on at the protests; none of the alleged violence actually took place, and the threshold for invoking emergency powers was not met, per the testimony of dozens of government officials.
It was something those of us who took part in the protest didn't need an inquest to tell us.
Adding to the scandal, one reason Justice Paul Rouleau, the commissioner of the inquest, cited for reluctantly granting Trudeau legitimacy for invoking the Emergencies Act was the accusations against the men arrested at Coutts. And yet, they were only ever accusations, and there was never any substantial evidence for the Crown to make its case. The two years of delay in getting this case moving were partly caused by the Crown refusing to disclose evidence to the defense.
The most heinous of the charges leveled against two of the men freed this week have now been dropped, bringing into question once again the suspension of Canadian civil liberties, and reveals more clearly than ever that the Coutts Four have been political prisoners from the start, imprisoned on spurious grounds for daring to oppose the Trudeau Regime's COVID policies.
Given the political implications, lack of evidence, and outright campaign of silence around this case, one would think that investigative journalists would be all over it, asking hard questions about why a modern western nation state has political prisoners. It is long past time for the Canadian media to stop colluding with the government it's supposed to be covering critically. We need to be asking some hard questions about what happened with the Coutts Four: Were the charges laid against them politically motivated? Why did the Crown take so long to get this trial underway? Why did a judge deny them bail twice? Why were these men kept in solitary confinement?
Just like those Canadians smeared by Trudeau for questioning his policies during the COVID-19 pandemic, the Coutts Four are scapegoats, the bad guys Trudeau needed to legitimate his iron fisted rule.
Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin will never be granted the satisfaction of a legal ruling that they were innocent. And who can blame them for accepting a plea deal after two years of unjust incarceration, separated from their families as they were?They are never going to get those two years of their lives back. At the very least, investigations must be launched to determine how this travesty of injustice was allowed to take place.
In the face of the darkness and disrepute he has brought upon Canada, Justin Trudeau would resign if he had any honor left.
It is a small comfort that two of Canada's political prisoners are now free. But no Canadian is free when their civil liberties can be trampled at will by their Prime Minister.
Gord Magill is a trucker, writer, and commentator, who writes at www.autonomoustruckers.substack.com and can be found on Twitter @gordmagill.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
Uncommon Knowledge
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Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
