Why Lich and Barber’s Actions Don’t Deserve Jail Time

By: Gregory Staley

Written On: 2024-10-19

Stated plainly, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber don’t deserve jail time for their part in Canada’s Freedom Convoy – why you ask? They worked behind the scenes to bring the protest to an end.

While protesters were following Lich’s moniker of “hold the line,” Tamara Lich and lawyer Keith Wilson were in discussions with Doug Ford’s former Chief of staff and good friend Dean French to help make a deal or as Tamara called it, an “exit strategy” to leave Ottawa.

Lich during POEC testimony: “We wanted to go home. So we were looking for ways where we could start forming an exit stragegy.”

How did Doug Ford’s former Chief of Staff become the mediator for Lich, Barber and company?

As Dean French told CBC reporter Vassy Kapelos in an interview, a “good friend” of his called him saying he was “concerned” about the convoy and that things seemed to “be escalating” and that his friend thought that the truckers had “probably made their point.”

Mr. French then told the CBC reported that he received a call from former Premier Brian Peckford asking if he would speak with convoy lawyer Keith Wilson.

At the time of the Freedom Convoy, former Newfoundland Premier Brian Peckford was the chair of the organization known as Taking Back our Freedoms. The group was founded by former political strategists for Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, Roy Beyers and George Bears.

Mr. French disclosed during the interview that in his conversation with lawyer Keith Wilson he wanted to see if they could bring the temperature down “before this escalates,” and before somebody got tired, “whether it’s a trucker or a police officer and something not very good happens.”

Simply put, my read on the situation is that Mr. French was there to help Wilson and Lich form an exit strategy. That is to say, the former Chief of Staff for Doug Ford was brought in by Wilson and welcomed by Lich and Barber whom wanted to see the protest come to an end and Mr. French helped bring about that result.

This is the strategy Lich referred to in her Public Order Emergency Commission testimony (POEC) that had come about in the early days of the protest.

As she told the commission, she had been in talks about an exit strategy “shortly after the legal team arrived.”

This would explain why French had indicated in his interview, that he was there to “de-escalate a situation that was getting heated up.”

What better way to “de-escalate” a protest than to give the city and police exactly what they wanted and shrink the protest footprint – a move that would ultimately allow the police to kettle protesters and bring the protest to an end.

Lich legal counsel began talks with Doug Ford’s former Chief of staff days before meeting with City of Ottawa

How early did the legal team begin conversations with Doug Ford’s good friend and former Chief of Staff? According to communications with Diverge Media, lawyer Keith Wilson indicated that he was in communications with Doug Ford’s former Chief of staff as early as February 6th – just two days before Tamara Lich, Keith Wilson and Tom Marazzo sat down with a representative of the City of Ottawa.

During that discussion, they cow-tailed to the city, pledging to remove trucks from “residential neighbourhoods” and concentrate them in front of Canada’s parliament.

This arrangement also perfectly coincided with what the City of Ottawa and Ottawa police wanted – that is to shrink the footprint of the protest to make it easier to bring the protest to an end.

Deputy Chief Bell also testified that he “wanted to have as many people voluntarily leave” as possible so that they could “shrink the footprint” and have “less people to remove” – something the deal to consolidate trucks onto Wellington seems to coincide well with.

https://divergemedia.ca/2023/03/02/staley-keith-wilson-dean-french-and-a-billionaire-with-an-idea/

Most importantly, this all happened behind the scenes without truckers on the ground having any knowledge that it was occurring. They found out after the fact. Those that were more involved in planning and media like BJ Dichter and Brigitte Belton were also unaware of what was going on behind closed doors.

Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that Dichter and Belton and truckers on the ground weren’t informed about French’s involvement however, as Freedom Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson had a very nonchalant attitude about his involvement.

What do I mean by this? In an interview with the author of “The Prime Minister who stole Freedom”, Convoy lawyer Keith Wilson said that it didn’t matter who the “g0-between” with the city. Mr. Wilson even went as far as to say they could’ve had a “radical market economist or a communist” be the mediator because they were just “facilitating dialogue.”

Talk about insanity. By that logic, they could’ve had Chrystia Freeland or Prime Minister Trudeau mediate their discussion with the city of Ottawa because they were only going to “facilitate dialogue.”

I think it goes without saying that involving Doug Ford’s former Chief of staff is ludacris. Why would you involve a guy who has close ties to one of the worst violators of rights and freedoms during the Covid era?

Perhaps Lich and company went to such bizarre lengths to help end the protest because as Lich described in her book “Hold The Line”, she “didn’t want anybody to get hurt” and was concerned that protest could turn into a riot.

Regardless of the reasons, Lich and Barber worked with the police and the city to end the protest, how can they be guilty of mischief when they actively worked with police and the city to help end the trucker convoy?

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