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Mischief Trial of the Century: Inside the Crown’s Bogus, Punitive and Occasionally Hilarious Case Against the Freedom Convoy’s Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, Part II

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41 minute read

By Lynne Cohen

“The most serious charges in Canada of a criminal nature often take less than 30 days [to resolve at trial]. That this has gone on for 45 days…must be considered one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian legal history.”

More people are becoming painfully familiar with the expression “the process is the punishment” – a legal or regulatory matter of such cost, complexity, length and personal stress that, regardless of its formal outcome, the targeted person emerges damaged, sometimes irreparably. It is all-but impossible not to attach this label to the nearly three-year-long prosecution of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, which has included a marathon 13-month-long trial, now awaiting its verdict. In Part II of this series, Lynne Cohen takes readers inside the Ottawa Courthouse – talking to the defendants, their lawyers and other experts – illuminating the Crown’s relentless pursuit of the Freedom Convoy organizers. (Part I can be read here. )
The criminal trial of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber finally got underway on September 5, 2023, more than a year-and-a-half after they were arrested during the Freedom Convoy protest in February 2022. By the time their trial began, Crown prosecutor Moiz Karimjee had been replaced with Assistant Crown Attorneys Tim Radcliffe and Siohbain Wetscher. While the change in personnel might have seemed like welcome news to the defendants – given Karimjee’s heavy-handed pre-trial manoeuvres and his previous generous donations to the Liberal Party of Canada, as explained in the first of this two-part series – there was no appreciable alteration in the Crown’s tactics or overall strategy. It remained a no-holds-barred, drag-’em-out affair.

Initially scheduled for a tidy 10 days, it quickly became apparent the Crown’s new team had no intention of moving swiftly or efficiently. Three days in, Wetscher and Radcliffe were still introducing a vast array of evidence, mostly Facebook and TikTok posts plus thousands of text messages seized from the pair. The defence rightly argued all of this should have been revealed before the trial started. A week in, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey griped that her trial was already at risk of going “off the rails”. The Crown’s late disclosures left her feeling “very unhappy,” agreeing with the defence that “this should have been done well before the trial.”

“I want a not guilty. Period”: Despite the Crown’s plan to drag out their trial for as long as possible, Tamara Lich and Chris Barber were determined to see it through to the very end. Shown, Lich (at front left) and Barber (at front right) walk to court, November 1, 2022. (Source of photo: The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld)

By the start of the second week, Lich’s defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon tried to hurry things along by agreeing to accept some of the Crown’s arguments regarding the protest’s impact on residents in downtown Ottawa. “There were individuals who interfered with the enjoyment of property,” he admitted, suggesting the two sides put together an agreed statement of facts. Wetscher “respectfully declined” this offer. She instead promised to produce a lengthy parade of witnesses to complain about the garbage, noise, smells and congestion associated with the protest. Horn-honking by the truckers was to be a particular focus, given how much it irritated those living nearby.

Even Perkins-McVey thought this tactic was a waste of time. “I just don’t know if this evidence is going to have the weight that you hope,” she informed Wetscher, noting that Lich and Barber had no interactions with any of the prospective witnesses. Worried that her trial could “run on ad infinitum,” the judge allowed Wetscher to call just five local residents and imposed clear limits on what they could discuss.

As the proceedings dragged on over the ensuing months for reasons both mundane and mysterious – the strange disappearance of internal police emails supporting defence arguments that the truckers were initially welcomed by the Ottawa Police Service and shown where to park was one such example – the assembled court watchers and journalists in Courtroom 5 at 161 Elgin Street began to speculate that Lich and Barber’s constitutional right to a prompt trial might be in jeopardy. This offered a potential escape hatch for the accused.

One regular unconvinced by this prospect was Lich herself. As she explained to C2C during a courtroom break, the idea of getting off on a technicality was anathema to her. “I don’t want a ‘Jordon’ decision,” she said, referring to a 2016 Supreme Court ruling that sets time limits of 18 to 30 months for most criminal trials. “I want a not guilty. Period. And I am not afraid. What are they going do, put me in prison? Been there, done that. If they can’t frighten you, they have no power over you.” Prior to the trial, Lich had already spent 49 days in jail.

Lich’s determination to see her trial out to its conclusion regardless of delays or hurdles likely posed a significant obstacle to the Crown. Considering the fury with which Canada’s legal system has pursued her and Barber for the relatively minor crimes of mischief and obstructing police during the Freedom Convoy protest, it seems plausible the Crown’s goal from the start was to bully them into accepting a plea bargain simply to bring the interminable prosecution to a close. Given its benign reputation but steep potential consequences, criminal mischief seems the ideal charge for this sort of brinkmanship. Set against a possible 10-year prison term, the prospect of pleading guilty to a modest-sounding crime and accepting some modest punishment might appeal to many.

“Even a rich person would not do this kind of trial”: Rebel News’ Erza Levant argues that the length of the case mounted by the Crown would likely have exhausted even the resources of multi-millionaires. Only the broad-based fundraising efforts of groups such as Rebel News and The Democracy Fund allowed Lich and Barber to counter the Crown’s strategy and avoid a plea bargain. (Source of left screenshot: Rebel News)

But Lich and Barber have refused to play the Crown’s game. Not only have they signalled a steely determination to let the trial play out to its end, they also have the financial resources to back up their resolve. Besides their own substantial fundraising efforts, both have benefited from the support of organizations such as Rebel News and The Democracy Fund in raising money for their lawyers.

As Rebel News’ Ezra Levant explained in an interview with another publication at the Ottawa Courthouse, “A poor person could not afford the nearly half million dollars needed to run a year-long trial. Even a rich person would not do this kind of trial, would not spend half a million dollars for this. They’d all cut a deal.” The decidedly working-class Lich and Barber are neither rich nor poor. But neither are they interested in cutting a deal. Halfway through the trial, Barber told C2C that he’d spent $30,000 of his own money on legal fees, as well as having received more than that from donations and other sources.

Unable to intimidate the pair or run them out of money, the prosecution had to get creative.

Get Carter

In November 2023, with the trial now two months old, the Crown unveiled an additional tactic to ensnare Lich and Barber: what is known as a Carter application. Named for a 1982 Supreme Court case involving a marijuana smuggling ring in the Maritimes, a Carter application sets out a series of steps and evidentiary standards required to link individuals together in a broader criminal conspiracy. Significantly, the focus of the Carter application in this case appeared to be on the sole charge that Barber faces alone.

Lich and Barber together are charged with committing mischief, obstructing police, blocking a highway and counselling others to do all these things. Barber is additionally charged with one count of counselling others to ignore a court order. On February 7, in the midst of the protest, local residents received a court injunction prohibiting gratuitous horn-honking in downtown Ottawa. Two days later, Barber posted a TikTok video in which he said, “Grab that horn switch and don’t let go. Let that f—–’ horn go no matter what.” As Toronto criminal defence lawyer Ari Goldkind observes in an interview, this particular charge presents a “problem” for Barber: he is explicitly calling for protesters to violate the injunction. Of all the charges faced by the pair, this seems the most likely to stick. The issue for the Crown – given its palpable animosity towards Lich – is that it only sticks to Barber.

Amid the mountains of social media and other evidence collated and presented by the Crown, there is none that Lich ever encouraged anyone to break any court order or injunction. “There’s not one word emanating [from] Tamara Lich that she even said ‘honking’ or ‘horns’,” Greenspon pointed out during the trial. Quite the opposite. The evidence repeatedly shows Lich counselling others to remain lawful and respectful.

The Carter gambit: Midway through the trial, the Crown introduced a Carter application, a novel legal manoeuvre meant to ensnare Lich in a crime only Barber is alleged to have committed. Shown at top, the text of the TikTok video from Barber encouraging truckers to blow their horns following a court injunction against gratuitous horn-honking. (Source of bottom photo: JulieK2/Shutterstock)

The Carter argument, however, may provide the Crown with a sneaky way around this inconvenient lack of proof. According to Goldkind, Carter “basically uses the actions of one of the co-conspirators to obtain a conviction against the other.” If the Carter application succeeds in establishing a conspiracy scenario, a conviction for Barber on this single charge could then be applied to Lich as well. Even if she never did anything of the kind. Perkins-McVey has said she will rule on the Carter application when she renders her final judgement. And while such a legal manoeuvre appears to violate the principles of natural justice, it could be the Crown’s best and only shot at finding Lich guilty.

This is why it has been so important for the prosecution to show Lich and Barber together as co-leaders of the protest, as was the focus of the 106-slide PowerPoint presentation shown during the Crown’s closing arguments. “They’re not ordinary members of the occupation,” [emphasis added] Radcliffe explained in his final submission, using an inflammatory mischaracterization of the protest favoured by the government and other Freedom Convoy opponents. “They are leaders, publicly identified as such.”

This also explains the Crown’s odd fixation with pronouns. The prosecution submitted numerous examples of Barber and Lich using terms such as “we” and “us”, including when Lich said on February 3, “We plan to be here for the long haul.” According to Radcliffe, “that ‘we’ pronoun was endless,” and he claimed this proves their combined leadership role, as opposed to, say, their merely holding common views or expressing solidarity with other protesters.

Duelling definitions: Assistant Crown Attorney Tim Radcliffe (middle) claimed Lich’s catch-phrase “Hold the line” was a war-cry meant to incite open rebellion, while her defence lawyer Lawrence Greenspon (right) said it was simply an encouragement for protesters to carry on. (Sources of photos: (middle) IAP; (right) The Canadian Press/Patrick Doyle)

Radcliffe also engaged in a lengthy disquisition about the meaning of Lich’s catch-phrase “Hold the line.” According to the Crown, it was a war-cry meant to incite open rebellion; Radcliffe claimed the term actually “crossed the line” by encouraging illegal behaviour. According to Greenspon, however, “Saying ‘Hold the line’ was a way of encouraging demonstrators not to give up.” Perkins-McVey, for her part, observed that it could simply mean, “Stay true to your values.” The judge also noted that she’d heard police use the same phrase during crowd control efforts.

The frequency with which the judge engaged in often-pointed debate with the Crown attorneys seems noteworthy. Early in the trial, Radcliffe attempted to turn an obvious joke told on TikTok about how the protest was about to move to Toronto into further proof of nefarious purpose. Perkins-McVey quickly admonished him for his lack of imagination. “Reacting to a joke is not a crime,” she remarked offhandedly. She also went out of her way to scold him for imputing unproven radical or violent motives onto Lich and Barber. “They were moderate, that’s why [city] officials reached out to them,” Perkins-McVey explained. Another time, in response to Radcliffe’s assertion that the protest was “unlawful” based on statements made by the police, she wryly shot back, “Just because police say it was unlawful doesn’t make it so.”

Looking out for the accused: During the trial, Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey frequently sparred with the Crown attorneys, admonishing them for imputing motives, missing jokes or wasting her time. As a defence lawyer in Ottawa prior to being called to the bench, Perkins-McVey was well-known for protecting the rights of her clients. (Source of photo: Bluewater Association for Lifelong Learning)

What appears to be the judge’s simmering frustration with the Crown’s interminable and often exaggerated arguments is fully in keeping with Perkins-McVey’s legal reputation. As a high-profile defence lawyer prior to being appointed to the bench, she was known throughout the Ottawa legal community for her determination on behalf of her clients’ rights. This story’s author, while an articling student, once crossed paths with Perkins-McVey in the Ottawa Courthouse lobby. “Someone has to stick up for them!” the future judge yelled from across the room, deep in a private argument. When your correspondent impishly asked “Who?” she responded to everyone within earshot, “The accused!”

The Defence Speaks at Last

Once the Crown rested its case, the defence – comprised of Diane Magas and Marwan Younes for Barber plus Greenspon and Eric Granger for Lich – introduced no further evidence and called no witnesses. Neither Lich nor Barber took the stand in their own defence, as is their right without prejudice. This move shortened the trial considerably and further emphasized that its excessive length to date was almost entirely the prosecution’s doing. It also required the Crown to go first during closing arguments, as is recounted in Part I of this series.

When the defence’s turn came, Barber’s lawyers spoke for the first two days, followed by another two days for Lich’s team. Granger spent his time explaining how his client never did anything illegal. “Leading a convoy of trucks to Ottawa is not unlawful,” he noted. “There is no evidence of Lich even being in a vehicle or parking in a vehicle. There is no evidence of her honking horns or emitting any exhaust. There is no evidence of any Ottawa residents having any interactions with Lich. No evidence of her personally obstructing a peace officer.”

Greenspon followed Granger and began with his reading of the dozens of previous mischief cases assembled by the Crown as legal precedent for the charges against Lich and Barber. None of them, he said, involved protesters “told where to park and where to stay, [and] then prosecuted for parking or staying” in those spots, he noted. The level of official direction provided to the protesters was unprecedented; Greenspon then displayed the maps given to the truckers by police showing “staging areas” around downtown Ottawa designated for their exclusive use. “Can it be said that in following the instructions of the OPS, that they weren’t in compliance with the very plan Ottawa police gave them?” he wondered. How could anyone be arrested for following police orders?

Is it against the law to obey the police? As Greenspon argued during his final summation, the Ottawa Police Service initially directed the truckers to park in designated staging areas, implying that the protest had official approval. At top, police-erected fencing demarcating the protest zone; at bottom, police mingle with protesters during the first days of the protest. (Sources of photos: (top) Gary A Corcoran Arts/Shutterstock; (bottom) Benoit Daoust/Shutterstock)

“What Tamara Lich encouraged was entirely lawful,” Greenspon continued. While she stands accused of counselling others to break the law, the evidence collected by the Crown itself points in the other direction. He noted her efforts to register the truckers and implement “a signed code of conduct.” Even more significant is the agreement she struck with Ottawa mayor Jim Watson to begin voluntarily removing trucks from Parliament Hill. The deal was signed before the imposition of the Emergencies Act. This is what Greenspon referred to as “moving day” in a telephone interview with C2C soon after the trial started. “The Emergencies Act was completely unnecessary,” he told C2C. “By February 12 there had been an agreement between Tamara Lich and the mayor of Ottawa to reduce the size of the footprint of the trucks…and it actually started to happen the same day as the invocation.”

Throughout the Freedom Convoy event, Greenspon told the court in his summation, Lich encouraged protesters to remain peaceful and “show respect for police officers.” All the Crown can prove, he asserted, is that “Tamara Lich knew there were lots of trucks that were impeding traffic, and as far as anyone could tell, the Ottawa police did nothing about it.” As for the Crown’s Carter gambit meant to ensnare Lich in Barber’s solitary transgression, Greenspon charged, “It is unprecedented for the Crown to take a democratic lawful purpose and try to juxtapose that with acts by other individuals.”

Early in the trial, Perkins-McVey had mused that the crux of the case before her rested on the issue of, “How do we balance the right to protest with the right to use and enjoy private property?” Greenspon returned to this central question in his summation, claiming it was an easy one to answer. Does a temporary interference into the daily lives of residents take precedence over the Charter-given rights of protesters to express themselves, he asked rhetorically. “We say not so!” he replied. “In a contest between constitutionally-protected rights and the interference in enjoyment of property, there is no contest.”

No limits: In a competition between the enjoyment of private property and the Charter-protected right to free expression, Greenspon declared “there is no contest” and that there should “never be a time limit” imposed on Canadians exercising their essential freedoms. (Source of photo: Valmedia/Shutterstock)

And when the judge provocatively asked him if the protestors should have policed themselves better by packing up and leaving prior to being forcibly evicted – Perkins-McVey didn’t spar only with the Crown’s attorneys – Greenspon shot back eagerly and with flourish. “Poppycock!” he declared. Any claim the truckers overstayed their welcome would amount to an “attempt to retroactively justify why the trucks were led into the downtown core without any time limit,” noting further that the February 7 horn-honking injunction explicitly preserved both the truckers’ right to remain in the Ottawa core and their liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful and safe protest. “They never put a time limit on…freedom of expression,” Greenspon concluded. Nor should anyone.

“Biggest waste of time”

When the trial finally wrapped up on September 15, its 45 sitting days and 13-month duration likely set some sort of record for the Canadian legal system. In every aspect it had lasted far longer than expected, something that was almost entirely the result of Crown tactics and strategy. Even the closing arguments exceeded expectations as the prosecution demanded the right of reply to the defence’s summation, adding yet another day.

Veteran court reporter Aeden Helmer of the Ottawa Citizen, who covered every day of the trial, noted in his blog, “I have never encountered a trial that required 7 days just for closing arguments. I’ve covered murder trials that managed to get through closing arguments (in front of a jury) in a day or two.” According to The Democracy Fund, the prosecution of Lich and Barber constituted “the longest mischief trial in Canadian history”. Echoing Helmer, Greenspon noted that, “I’ve represented people charged with a lot more serious crimes than this, and the trials have not taken nearly as long.” During a courtroom break near the end of the case, Lich’s lead lawyer told a crowd of reporters, only half in jest, “We are going to apply to the Guinness Book of World Records.”

“This is the biggest waste-of-time prosecution in the history of waste-of-time prosecutions,” Toronto lawyer Goldkind exclaimed after the trial wrapped up. “The most serious charges in Canada of a criminal nature often take less than 30 days [to resolve at trial]. That this has gone on for 45 days…must be considered one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian legal history.” By way of comparison, the 1995 trial of Paul Bernardo, one of Canada’s most notorious murderers, was concluded in four months, although it sat for slightly more than 45 days.

“An obscene waste of taxpayers’ money”: High-profile Toronto defence lawyer Ari Goldkind (left) calls the 13-month-long trial of Lich and Barber “one of the most shameful episodes in Canadian legal history”. By comparison, the trial of Paul Bernardo (right), one of Canada’s most infamous murderers, lasted just four months. (Sources of photos: (left) CBC; (right) The Canadian Press/Frank Gunn)

For Goldkind, the political vendetta against Lich and Barber is not only vexatious and unfair but a grotesque squandering of public resources. “Every day the courtroom was filled with this stupid case meant there were other trials for rape, child abuse, sex assault, drinking and driving, drug trafficking that were being delayed,” he says, an assessment based on his own experiences as a criminal lawyer. “This was an obscene waste of taxpayer’s money on every level.” In this observation, Goldkind echoes the work of prominent Queen’s University law professor Bruce Pardy, who has written extensively on how Canada’s courts have become badly clogged and afflicted by delays for nearly all legal procedures.

Punished by Process

In his classic 1979 text The Process is the Punishment, American sociologist Malcolm M. Feeley observed a clear distinction in the form of punishment meted out by the upper and lower courts of New Haven, Connecticut. As the higher federal courts were concerned with serious crimes such as armed robbery, rape and murder, they thus dealt out significant penalties, including lengthy jail sentences and possibly even capital punishment.

The lower courts, however, were involved with relatively minor crimes that attracted suitably lighter sentences. Feeley’s insight was that the true nature of the punishment they delivered lay in the accumulation of pre-trial burdens placed on the accused, such as meeting bail requirements, getting time off work, attending court and so on. By the time a verdict was rendered – whether guilty or not guilty – the “sentence” was essentially over.

This phenomenon has only worsened throughout North America in the ensuing decades, as prominent commentators such as Mark Steyn have noted. Others, like Canadian media icon Conrad Black, use the term “prosecutocracy” to describe the vindictive and unjust manner in which the legal system can pursue a target out of all proportion to the matter at hand. The prosecution of Lich and Barber appears among the most egregious examples of such punishment-by-process yet to be found in a Canadian court.

Ground down by the system: Based on his observations at the County Courthouse in New Haven, Connecticut (top left), Malcolm M. Feeley’s 1979 book The Process is the Punishment argued that the true form of legal punishment often arises from the many pre-trial burdens and obligations placed on the accused – regardless of the ultimate verdict. More recently, conservative commentators Mark Steyn (bottom left) and Conrad Black (bottom right) have amplified this message. (Sources of photos: (top left) ajay_suresh – New Haven County Courthouse, licensed under CC BY 2.0; (bottom left) The Standard; (bottom right) ideacity/YouTube)

Having been identified by politicians in Ottawa as the leaders of a national protest-cum-uprising that allegedly required the invocation of the Emergencies Act, and hence the suspension of Canadians’ essential rights and freedoms, the pair must now fulfill their putative role as arch-villains. But instead of charging them with serious crimes such as sedition or rioting, the worst the police could come up with were mischief and obstructing police. Depressingly – for the powers-that-be – these crimes typically entail only modest sanctions. And based on the experience of other protesters arrested at the same time, Lich and Barber seem likely to be found not guilty as charged. Or, failing that, to receive a sentence no longer than time already served.

And so, in order to validate the (purely figurative) high treason of Lich and Barber, the Crown has had to think outside the box. This presumably explains the legal gymnastics of the Carter application – an attempt at finding Lich guilty of a crime only Barber is charged with committing. But even that seems like a long shot. Which in turn has necessitated the Crown’s ultimate tactic: to drag out the case such that the legal process itself – with all the costs, obstacles, uncertainty, wasted time and personal stress that entails – either spurs the defendants to plead guilty or, failing that, serves as the punishment itself. All before the formal verdict is rendered.

It may also be hoped in some quarters that this delay and obfuscation will lessen the political embarrassment should the entire matter fizzle out ignominiously. If the verdicts are not guilty, or guilty but with punishment as time served, most Canadians may hardly even notice, having grown bored with the whole topic and “moved on.” Indeed, it is possible that Justin Trudeau will no longer be prime minister by the time Lich and Barber learn their fate. And his successor will almost certainly claim that the whole mess wasn’t their doing and that they always had doubts about invoking the Emergencies Act.

Necessary victims: In order to validate the Liberal Cabinet’s decision to invoke the Emergencies Act, it became necessary to paint the Freedom Convoy as a full-scale threat to public order, and Lich and Barber as notorious insurrectionists. Shown, Barber (left) and Lich (right) are arrested in downtown Ottawa on February 17, 2022 on mischief charges.

It is for such self-serving and, some might say, deeply unjust motives that a petite, devout Métis grandmother has been presented to the world as a dangerous, violent rebel whose mere liberty would threaten the safety of all of downtown Ottawa, and whose subsequent communications on social media might destabilize Canada itself. And why she has already spent 49 days in jail for a crime than generally results in no jail time at all.

This is why Karimjee, the original Crown prosecutor, absurdly argued that the fact Lich had accepted a public honour was reason enough to lock her up for years. And why, when that same over-zealous, Liberal-donating prosecutor thought he had her trapped in another bail breach when she allowed her picture to be taken with lawyers just slightly off-stage, he issued a Canada-wide warrant for her arrest and sent homicide detectives to Medicine Hat to bring her back to Ottawa – who actually placed her in leg shackles. If any of these theatrics was justified, Lich would indeed be the greatest criminal threat this country has seen since the FLQ Crisis or the Riel Rebellion.

Only when the case finally made its way into a courtroom, however, was the true nature of the prosecution’s animus fully revealed. “This should not be the trial of the Freedom Convoy,” Greenspon declared at the outset. Yet that’s exactly what it became: a punitive effort to hold Lich and Barber accountable for the actions of others – most of whom were never charged with anything or who had their charges dropped. As the evidence shows, Lich worked tirelessly to make the Freedom Convoy a peaceful, law-abiding and community-minded event.

Canada’s greatest criminal mastermind? Lich, a peaceful and devout Métis grandmother, has been the subject of intense focus by the Canadian legal system. After her initial arrest, she was re-arrested at home in Medicine Hat and placed in leg shackles for part of her trip back to Ottawa. (Source of photo: Freedom Convoy 2022/Facebook)

And while she was not always successful, whatever failures occurred do not rest on her shoulders. They are the fault of the many other groups, institutions and individuals involved, including the Ottawa police. Throughout the three-week-long demonstration, Lich remained a voice of idealism, love and respect for the rights of all Canadians to participate in peaceful protest. And for this she has been treated with the utmost disrespect, the most obvious evidence being her 13-month, 45-day show trial alongside Barber for a crime of no consequence whatsoever.

Perkins-McVey has said that on November 26 she will provide an update regarding when she expects to reveal her final decision; the verdict itself could still be many months away. Until then, the punishment of Tamara Lich and Chris Barber continues.

Lynne Cohen is a journalist and non-practicing lawyer in Ottawa. She has published four books, including the biography Let Right Be Done: The Life and Times of Bill Simpson.

Source of main image: JuliaDorian/Shutterstock.

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Health Canada received over a million reports of COVID vaccine adverse events: records

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From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

As reported first by True North, according to Access to Information correspondence, from December 2020 to December 2022 Health Canada got over a million serious adverse event reports regarding the COVID vaccines.

Newly uncovered records have revealed that during the so-called pandemic thousands of serious adverse event reports related to the mRNA COVID jabs were reported to Health Canada each day, at the same time public health officials and the media claimed the experimental vaccines were safe. 

As reported first by True North, according to Access to Information (ATIP) correspondence, from December 2020 to December 2022 Health Canada got over a million serious adverse events (SAE) reports regarding the COVID vaccines from Pfizer, AstraZeneca, Moderna and Janssen. Broken down, some 600,000 of the reports related to the Pfizer jab, 220,000 to AstraZeneca, 160,000 to Moderna and 22,000 to Janssen. Of note is that the Pfizer jab was the most widely distributed in Canada.  

As per regulations, pharmaceutical companies must report SAE that happen anywhere in the world to Canada’s public health minister within “15 days after receiving or becoming aware of the information.” 

The access to information coordinator noted that a “broader interpretation (of your request) could encompass millions of records,” adding that as they had a “processing capacity of about 500 pages per month,” handling such a large volume would “require a significant amount of time to complete.”   

Broken down, if one serious adverse event report totals just a page each, at the given processing speed, it would take 167 years before all the SAEs would be processed. 

The first COVID jab to be approved for use in Canada was Pfizer’s BioNTech mRNA injection, which became available on December 9, 2020. Moderna’s mRNA jab soon followed a couple of weeks later. Of important note is the launch of the jabs came after the government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau gave vaccine makers a shield from liability regarding jab-related injuries. 

Health minister would have seen SAE submissions  

By June of 2021, the SAE submissions just for the Pfizer shot totaled over 100,000 reports worldwide, with some 820 in Canada alone. Canada’s then-Minister of Health Patty Hadju would have had information at this time from the various drug jab makers showing how many SAEs there were both domestically and worldwide. 

It is estimated that overall Health Canada was getting about 10,000 SAE reports from worldwide sources every week.  

All levels of Canadian government heavily promoted the COVID shots, regularly touting them as both “safe and effective.” 

The mRNA shots have also been linked to a multitude of negative and often severe side effects in children and all have connections to cell lines derived from aborted babies.

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Ottawa once again defends egregious mismanagement during COVID

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From the Fraser Institute

By: Jake Fuss and Tegan Hill

Two federal cabinet ministers criticized the report because it “fails to properly acknowledge that CEBA was designed and delivered during a global pandemic.” Translation—taxpayer money can be mismanaged so long as it’s delivered quickly, and we can use an emergency as an excuse for wasteful spending

According to a new report by Canada’s auditor general, in another of example of mismanagement and waste during the COVID pandemic, nearly 10 per cent—or $3.5 billion—of the federal government’s Canada Emergency Business Account (CEBA) loans went to ineligible businesses.

The report said “the program was not managed with due regard for value for money” and the government “did not effectively oversee the CEBA program.”

In response, two federal cabinet ministers criticized the report because it “fails to properly acknowledge that CEBA was designed and delivered during a global pandemic.”

Translation—taxpayer money can be mismanaged so long as it’s delivered quickly, and we can use an emergency as an excuse for wasteful spending. Accountability to the public is evidently an afterthought.

Of course, this is only the latest revelation of Trudeau government mismanagement during COVID. The government spent huge sums of taxpayer money on expensive programs such as the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy (CEWS) and Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB). But a substantial share of this spending was simply wasted.

For example, an earlier report in 2022 by the auditor general found that ineligible individuals received $4.6 billion in CERB payments and other benefits. Ineligible recipients included 1,522 prisoners, 391 dead people and 434 children too young to be eligible. And 51,049 employers incorrectly received $9.9 billion in wage subsidies even though they did not have a sufficient drop in revenue to be eligible for the subsidies.

The federal government also spent billions on Canadians who probably didn’t need the money. An analysis published in 2020 by the Fraser Institute estimated that $11.8 billion in CERB payments went to eligible young people (ages 15 to 24) living with their parents in households with at least $100,000 in income. And an estimated $7.0 billion in CERB payments went to spouses in families with at least $100,000 in household income.

COVID-related programs were not only poorly targeted, but many payments surpassed the level required to restore the regular income of many recipients. According to the auditor general, the lowest-income Canada Recovery Benefit (CRB) recipients could take in more money from government benefits than from working, and the program “represented a disincentive to work, which impacted some labour markets at a crucial time when the need for employees was trending upwards.”

The total costs of fiscal waste during COVID are difficult to nail down. But our 2023 study estimated that one in four dollars of federal pandemic spending was wasted. That amounts to at least $89.9 billion in total fiscal waste. For context, that’s roughly what the British Columbia government spends annually in its entire budget for health care, education, social services, infrastructure, etc.

Finally, because the Trudeau government borrowed money to finance its excessive and wasteful COVID spending, Canadians will pay an estimated $21.1 billion in debt interest costs (over a 10-year period) that are directly attributable to this fiscal waste.

The new report by the auditor general is the latest proof of mismanagement by Ottawa during COVID, to the tune of billions of dollars in waste. Unfortunately, the government continues to scoff at the bill it’s handed to taxpayers for the waste it produced.

Jake Fuss

Director, Fiscal Studies, Fraser Institute

Tegan Hill

Director, Alberta Policy, Fraser Institute
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