From LifeSiteNews

By Clare Marie Merkowsky

In a recent podcast, Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich said that there is about $5.5 million in citizen donations ‘locked up in an escrow’ and ‘seized by the Government of Ontario.’

Freedom Convoy leader Tamara Lich, who is currently on trial for her role in organizing the historic protest, says the Ontario government is withholding $5.5 million of donations raised for the movement in 2022.

In a May episode of the conservative-leaning podcast “Stand on Guard,” Lich told host David Krayden that $5.5 million Freedom Convoy donations given through GiveSendGo are currently frozen by the Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservative Ontario government.

“It’s locked up in an escrow I think,” Lich said. “There’s about $5.5 million that are locked up in an escrow seized by the Government of Ontario.” 

“They have a seizure order on it, as well as a forfeiture order on it,” she explained. “So I mean, the outcome of our criminal trial is definitely going to affect that.” 

Currently, Lich is being tried for her involvement in the Freedom Convoy which featured thousands of Canadians gathering in downtown Ottawa to call for an end to COVID regulations and vaccine mandates in the winter of 2022.  

At the time, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had disparaged unvaccinated Canadians, saying those opposing his measures were a “small, fringe minority” who hold “unacceptable views” and do not “represent the views of Canadians who have been there for each other.”  

While the trial is still ongoing, Lich promised that if the donations are ever returned, “we’ll do what we said we were going to do, we’ve got registration forms, from some of the truckers and people that were in Ottawa, to reimburse them, as well.” 

“As you know, we always wanted to donate what was ever left over to the veterans, that was always our goal,” she continued.  

The funds became unavailable to the Freedom Convoy when a court order froze the GiveSendGo account while the convoy was still ongoing. Shortly after, the GiveSendGo’s website was hacked and the donors’ private information was leaked to the public. 

As the protestors refused to give up despite their low funds and the freezing Canadian winter, Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act (EA) for the first time in Canadian history.   

Among the measures taken under the EA was freezing bank accounts of Canadians who donated to the protest.   

Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23 after the protesters had been cleared out. At the time, seven of Canada’s 10 provinces opposed Trudeau’s use of the EA.  

Eventually, Trudeau’s use of the EA was ruled to have violated the Charter of Rights and Freedoms by Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley. 

According to the January ruling, the EA is meant to be reserved as a last resort if all other means fail. In Mosley’s judgement, this threshold was not met and thus, the Trudeau government violated the rights of Canadians.

Shortly after the ruling, Trudeau announced that he would be appealing to the Federal Court of Appeal, where he has appointed 10 of the 15 judges.

Canada’s Freedom Convoy in Ottawa                                                                      Minas Panagiotakis/Getty Images

From LifeSiteNews

By Anthony Murdoch

The two-page Memorandum For The Attorney General was dated February 15, 2022, and was written by the deputy director of prosecutions. The date of the memorandum is significant, as it comes after Trudeau had invoked the EA on February 14.

A Conservative MP’s request for information has revealed that the cabinet of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau waited until after it had invoked the Emergencies Act (EA), which was done to take down the peaceful Freedom Convoy, to get legal advice from Canada’s Attorney General on whether its use was lawful. 

As noted in a recent Blacklocks’s Reporter article, Access To Information records obtained by Conservative MP Arnold Viersen from the office of the Attorney General confirm what many MPs have been suspicious of for years, that Trudeau’s use of the EA was not really warranted.  

“I filed an Access To Information request for the memorandum on the Emergencies Act sent to the Attorney General from the Public Prosecution Service,” MP Viersen said in a statement to the media. 

“What did they advise the Attorney General? We will never know because Justin Trudeau censored it.” 

The documents, despite being censored, do reveal that the two-page Memorandum For The Attorney General was dated February 15, 2022, and was written by the deputy director of prosecutions. The date of the memorandum is significant, as it comes after Trudeau had invoked the EA on February 14.

Trudeau’s Attorney General Arif Virani, during testimony on February 28, said that there was a legal opinion offered regarding whether the use of the EA would be justified, but that its contents had to remain confidential.

This claim of secret legal advice has never been substantiated.

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 EA on February 14, 2022. Trudeau revoked the EA on February 23.   

Earlier this year, Canada’s Federal Court announced that the use of the EA by the Trudeau government was a direct violation of the nation’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms, and thus was “not justified.”   

Of note is that the judge who ruled Trudeau’s government’s use of the EA was “not justified” was Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley, a Liberal-appointed and well-respected judge with decades of experience.    

The Trudeau government has since appealed the court’s decision.   

I do not ‘believe for a second’ the ‘threshold’ was met to invoke EA  

Conservative MP Glen Motz told a February 28 hearing of the Special Joint Committee on the Declaration of Emergency that he did not believe for a “second” that the “broader interpretation even existed,” in terms of the legality of the EA’s use. 

“I still believe more strongly today than I did in 2022 that the circumstances to invoke the Emergencies Act were not met,” he said, noting that “The threshold was not met.” 

“I agree with Justice Mosley in his decision that it was in fact illegal and unconstitutional,” he said.  

The EA controversially allowed the government to freeze the bank accounts of protesters, conscript tow truck drivers, and arrest people for participating in assemblies the government deemed illegal.   

Before Mosley’s ruling, an investigation into the use of the EA, as per Canadian law, was launched by Trudeau. The investigation, titled the Public Order Emergency Commission, was headed by Liberal-leaning Judge Paul Rouleau. Unsurprisingly, the commission exonerated Trudeau’s use of the EA.   

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.   

Last month, LifeSiteNews reported that Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu uncovered that the federal government of Trudeau spent $2.2 million in taxpayer money in a failed attempt to try and stop court challenges filed against it for enacting the EA to stop the peaceful Freedom Convoy.  

Freedom Convoy leaders Tamara Lich and Chris Barber have been in a ongoing legal battle with federal officials.