Tamara Lich’s Prosecution Is A Warning To Western Canada

From the Frontier Centre for Public Policy

The Tamara Lich trial shows just how far Ottawa will go to crush dissent, especially in the West

Tamara Lich’s prosecution isn’t just about a protest—it’s a warning. For many Western Canadians, her harsh treatment by Ottawa signals how far the federal government is willing to go to silence dissent. As Alberta moves toward a sovereignty referendum, Lich’s ordeal stands as a troubling omen of how Ottawa may respond to serious challenges to its authority.

Tamara Lich, a key organizer of the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest in Ottawa, became a central figure in a nationwide debate over pandemic mandates and civil liberties. She travelled to Ottawa to protest what she and many Canadians viewed as the federal government’s heavy-handed pandemic measures. Rather than respond with dialogue, the Trudeau government cracked down—hard. Lich was arrested, denied bail and now faces a potential seven-year sentence for her role in the peaceful protest.

That sentence exceeds those handed to violent offenders in some cases. One man, for example, stabbed his girlfriend three times and hit another woman with a pipe—yet received only a short sentence. Lich, meanwhile, faces seven years for mischief and breaching bail conditions. That’s not justice. It’s deterrence by example.

The disparity becomes even more striking when viewed in the broader context of the Freedom Convoy itself. The protest began in early 2022, when thousands of truckers and their supporters drove to Ottawa to oppose federal COVID-19 vaccine mandates, especially for cross-border drivers. The demonstration, which blocked downtown streets for several weeks, drew both support and condemnation across the country.

While the protest was disruptive, it was peaceful. That stands in contrast to the leniency shown toward other protest movements that involved far more dangerous actions. Protesters involved in the Wet’suwet’en rail blockades, Black Lives Matter demonstrations, or recent pro-Hamas marches engaged in activities that included burning rail tracks, toppling statues and threatening public safety—yet many escaped charges entirely or received minimal penalties. In Lich’s case, even honking a horn has been treated like a criminal conspiracy.

So what exactly did Tamara Lich do? She helped organize a peaceful protest. She spoke out against government overreach. She called for a meeting with the prime minister. That’s it.

The trucker-led convoy that she helped inspire emerged in response to a final, baffling mandate: that cross-border truckers be vaccinated against COVID-19. This came long after it was clear the vaccines didn’t prevent transmission. The mandate was political, not scientific. The truckers knew it. Ottawa knew it. Yet instead of backing down, the Trudeau government doubled down.

And this wasn’t an isolated example of government excess. Throughout the pandemic, Ottawa pushed increasingly arbitrary and often absurd restrictions. Playgrounds were closed. People were told to stay indoors and avoid outdoor air. Provincial premiers were pressured into compliance by threats to federal funding. Rules shifted weekly, often with little logic or explanation.

When Canadians finally pushed back, they weren’t met with humility or dialogue. They were met with insults. Trudeau had earlier described unvaccinated Canadians as “often misogynists, also often racists,” questioning whether society should “tolerate these people”—remarks widely seen as contributing to the hostile tone later directed at convoy protesters.

He refused to meet with them. He retreated to his cottage and then reached for the Emergencies Act—the first time it had ever been used in Canadian history, raising serious civil liberties concerns across the political spectrum.

It froze bank accounts, targeted private citizens and brought down the full weight of the state on people who were engaged in peaceful civil disobedience.

The legacy media echoed the government line, portraying protesters as dangerous extremists. The Ottawa police became aggressive. Even the chief justice of the Supreme Court made comments that blurred the line between judicial neutrality and political messaging. The signal was unmistakable: dissent would not be tolerated.

Why such an overreaction? Because the protest threatened not public safety, but political control. It exposed the disconnect between ordinary Canadians and the Ottawa elite, and it risked uniting voters across regional and political lines.

So the federal government chose to make an example of Lich. In doing so, they sent a chilling message: resist us, and we will ruin you.

That message matters now more than ever. Alberta is preparing for a sovereignty referendum—a vote designed to test whether the province should assert more control over taxation, natural resources and other federal matters. If Lich’s treatment is any indication, Ottawa will not respond kindly.

Expect the full machinery of the federal government, legal, financial and rhetorical, to be deployed to crush dissent, divide communities and discredit the movement.

There’s an old expression: punish a few to scare the many.

That’s what has happened here. Lich’s ordeal is not about justice. It’s about power. It’s about control. And it’s about sending a warning to anyone who dares question the authority of the federal government.

Lich will be remembered as a heroine in the West and a troublemaker in the East—a divide that says more about Canada than it does about her.

Her treatment is not the mark of a healthy democracy. It’s the sign of a government that no longer tolerates dissent. And it’s a very bad omen for Western Canadians who still believe in the right to speak out, stand up and say no.

Brian Giesbrecht is a retired judge and a senior fellow at the Frontier Centre for Public Policy.

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COVID-19

Major new studies link COVID shots to kidney disease, respiratory problems

Published on November 13, 2025

Todayville

From LifeSiteNews

By Calvin Freiburger

Receiving four or more COVID shots was associated with 559% higher likelihood of cold in children, a new study found, and another one linked the shots to higher risk of renal dysfunction.

Two major new studies have been published sounding the alarm about the COVID-19 shots potentially carrying risks of not only respiratory diseases but even kidney injury.

The Washington Stand first drew attention to the studies, published in the International Journal of Infectious Diseases (IJID) and International Journal of Medical Science (IJMS), respectively.

The first examined insurance claims and vaccination records for the entire population of South Korea, filtering out cases of infection prior to the start of the outbreak for a pool of more than 39 million people. It reported that the COVID shots correlated with mixed impacts on other respiratory conditions. A “temporary decline followed by a resurgence of URI [upper respiratory infections] and common cold was observed during and after the COVID-19 pandemic,” it concluded. “In the Post-pandemic period (January 2023–September 2024), the risk of URI and common cold increased with higher COVID-19 vaccine doses,” it noted.

Children in particular, who are known to face the lowest risk from COVID itself, had dramatically higher odds of adverse events the more shots they took. Receiving four or more was associated with 559% higher likelihood of cold, 91% higher likelihood of pneumonia, 83% higher likelihood of URI, and 35% higher likelihood of tuberculosis.

The second study examined records of 2.9 million American adults, half of whom received at least one COVID shot and half of whom did not.

“COVID-19 vaccination was associated with a higher risk of subsequent renal dysfunction, including AKI [acute kidney injury] and dialysis treatment,” it found, citing 15,809 cases versus 11,081. “The cumulative incidence of renal dysfunction was significantly higher in vaccinated than in unvaccinated patients […] At the one-year follow-up, the number of deaths among vaccinated individuals was 7,693, while the number of deaths among unvaccinated individuals was 7,364.” Notably, the study did not find a difference in the “type of COVID-19 vaccine administered.”

The researchers note that this is not simply a matter of correlation, but that a causal mechanism for such results has already been indicated.

“Prior studies have indicated that COVID-19 vaccines can damage several tissues,” they explain.

“The main pathophysiological mechanism of COVID-19 vaccine-related complications involve vascular disruption. COVID-19 vaccination can induce inflammation through interleukins and the nod-like receptor family pyrin domain-containing 3, an inflammatory biomarker. In another study, thrombosis episodes were observed in patients who received different COVID-19 vaccines. Additionally, mRNA COVID-19 vaccines have been associated with the development of myocarditis and related complications […] The development of renal dysfunction can be affected by several biochemical factors [26]. In turn, AKI can increase systemic inflammation and impair the vasculature and red blood cell aggregation. Given that the mechanism underlying COVID-19 vaccine-related complications corresponds to the pathophysiology of kidney disease, we hypothesized that COVID-19 vaccination may cause renal dysfunction, which was supported by the results of this study.”

Launched in the final year of President Donald Trump’s first term in response to COVID-19, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) had the COVID shots ready for use in a fraction of the time any previous vaccine had ever been developed and tested. As LifeSiteNews has extensively covered, a body of evidence steadily accumulated over the following years that they failed to prevent transmission and, more importantly, carried severe risks of their own. COVID was a sticking point for many in Trump’s base, yet he doggedly refused to disavow OWS.

So far, Trump’s second administration has rolled back several recommendations for the shots but not yet pulled them from the market, despite hiring several vocal critics of the COVID establishment and putting the Department of Health & Human Services under the leadership of America’s most prominent anti-vaccine activist, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Most recently, the administration has settled on leaving the current vaccines optional but not supporting work to develop successors.

In early August, Kennedy announced the government would be “winding down” almost $500 million worth of mRNA vaccine projects and rejecting future exploration of the technology in favor of more conventional vaccines. Last week, HHS revoked emergency use authorizations (EUA) for the COVID shots, which were used to justify the long-since-rescinded mandates and sidestep other procedural hurdles, and in its place issued “marketing authorization” for those who meet a minimum risk threshold for the following mRNA vaccines: Moderna (6+ months), Pfizer (5+), and Novavax (12+).

“These vaccines are available for all patients who choose them after consulting with their doctors,” Kennedy said, making good on his pledge to “end COVID vaccine mandates, keep vaccines available to people who want them, especially the vulnerable, demand placebo-controlled trials from companies,” and “end the emergency.”

COVID-19

Spy Agencies Cozied Up To Wuhan Virologist Before Lying About Pandemic

Published on November 11, 2025

Todayville

From the Daily Caller News Foundation

By Emily Kopp

A close collaborator of virologists who studied coronaviruses in Wuhan frequently advised America’s top spy agency in the lead-up to the pandemic, and that same agency suppressed intelligence on the parallels between COVID-19 and their research.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence’s (ODNI) hub for foreign biological threats dismissed the intelligence pointing to a lab accident in Wuhan as “misinformation” in January 2021, two former government sources who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive internal meetings told the Daily Caller News Foundation. New documents show that intelligence risked implicating ODNI’s own bioengineering advisor — University of North Carolina professor Ralph Baric.

Baric, who engineered novel coronaviruses with the Wuhan Institute of Virology (WIV), advised ODNI four times a year on biological threats, according to documents released Oct. 30 by Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul.

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Baric did not respond to the DCNF’s requests for comment.

The professor’s ties to American intelligence may run even deeper, the documents reveal, as ODNI facilitated a meeting between the CIA and Baric about a project on coronaviruses in September 2015.

The email exchange with the subject line “Request for Your Expertise” shows an unnamed government official with a CIA-affiliated email address pitching a “possible project” to Baric relating to “[c]oronavirus evolution and possible natural human adaptation.”

The new documents shed a bit of light on a question members of Congress have posed for years: Whether our own intelligence agencies knew more about the likelihood of a lab origin of COVID than they told the public.

“Director Ratcliffe has been on the forefront of this issue since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic and has been committed to transparency and accountability on this issue,” a CIA spokesperson said in a statement. “In January – as one of the Director’s first actions at Langley – CIA made public its assessment that a research-related origin of the COVID-19 pandemic is more likely than a natural origin. CIA will continue to evaluate any available credible new intelligence reporting as appropriate.”

Paul is seeking more documents from ODNI on potential ties between U.S. intelligence and the research in Wuhan as part of an ongoing investigation by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs and has promised public hearings in the coming months.

Director of National Intelligence (DNI) Tulsi Gabbard disbanded the ODNI biological threats office earlier this year following questions from the DCNF about its suppression of COVID origins intelligence in August. Gabbard and a dedicated working group have also been quietly investigating the origins of COVID.

Protecting Their Own

Baric gave a presentation to the ODNI in January 2020 showing that he advised American intelligence that COVID may have emerged from a lab, the documents also indicate. Baric shared that the WIV had sequenced thousands of SARS-like coronaviruses, including strains capable of epidemics, the slides show.

Baric noted that the Wuhan lab does this work under low biosafety levels despite the ability of some of these viruses to infect and grow in human lung cells.

What Baric omitted: He had submitted a grant application in 2018 with intentions to conduct research to make coronaviruses with the same rare features seen in COVID while concealing the Wuhan lab’s low biosafety level, jotting in the margins of a draft of the grant application that Americans would “freak out” if they knew about the shoddy standards.

One year after Baric’s presentation, ODNI had hardened against the lab leak hypothesis.

When State Department officials pushed to declassify certain intelligence related to a plausible lab leak in January 2021, the ODNI expressed concerns that it would “call out actions that we ourselves are doing.”

Former ODNI National Counterproliferation and Biosecurity Center (NCBC) Director Kathryn Brinsfield, a medical doctor, also dismissed a January 2021 presentation by government officials about a plausible lab origin of COVID as “misinformation,” two sources told the DCNF. Her top aide Zach Bernstein, who possesses a master’s degree in security studies but no scientific credentials, also dismissed the presentation, according to three sources.

Gabbard disbanded NCBC in August following questions from the DCNF about its role in suppressing COVID origins intelligence.

But in the years preceding Gabbard’s takeover of the intelligence community’s central office, the ODNI’s public reports omitted any analysis of COVID’s viral genome. One intelligence agency filed a formal complaint about this glaring omission, the DCNF reported.

Scientists often received fierce pushback from former National Intelligence Council official Adrienne Keen, who helped steward former President Joe Biden’s 90-day review into COVID’s origins, an official told the DCNF. Paul’s request for records from ODNI includes a request for some of Keen’s communications.

Brinsfield and Keen did not respond to requests for comment.

Unanswered Questions

Despite the new disclosures, the precise nature of the CIA’s interest in Baric’s coronavirus work remains unknown. The documents do not include any further details about the work that the CIA and Baric may or may not have undertaken.

The U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) funded the discovery of novel coronaviruses and shipped the samples to Wuhan through a 2009-2020 program called PREDICT, the DCNF reported in July. USAID sometimes acted as a CIA front before Trump dismantled it earlier this year — but no evidence exists that the CIA directed PREDICT.

An unnamed FBI special agent was in communication with Baric about responding to public requests for his research and emails with the Wuhan lab through the North Carolina Freedom of Information Act, according to a 2024 congressional letter, but details about the contact between the FBI and Baric also remain uncertain.

The CIA was slow to acknowledge that a lab was the pandemic’s most likely source, an assessment that the CIA made public more than five years after the pandemic emerged and well after the FBI and the Department of Energy.

In early 2020, when Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger tasked CIA analysts to dig into the matter, they came up empty, according to a New York Times report. Instead, anonymous sources smeared Pottinger as having a “conspiratorial view” of the Chinese Communist Party.

Trump’s current CIA Director John Ratcliffe, who served as the DNI from May 2020 to January 2021, revealed in a 2023 Wall Street Journal op-ed that he had pushed for the declassification of COVID origins intelligence as the DNI but that he “faced constant opposition, particularly from Langley.”