Ontario government seeking prison sentences for Freedom Convoy organizers Chris Barber and Tamara Lich

For Freedom Convoy organizers Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, the persecution from the Ontario Crown prosecution just keeps on coming. Not content with Barber and Lich serving one year of house arrest and six months of a strict curfew on a mischief conviction stemming from their peaceful protest against Covid mandates in 2022, the prosecution wants to retry both and seek long-term jail sentences.

Their 45-day judicial ordeal was the longest mischief trial in Canadian history but the Ontario government of Premier Doug Ford apparently did not think that was long enough. Barber and Lich spoke to The Post Millennial about their ongoing battle.

Barber says the decision on whether to have another trial will come after both he and Lich have served their current sentence. “We were given given 12 months of 24 hour curfew at home, so that 24-hour curfew will end October 7th of 2026, and then we go on to a six-month curfew from 10 pm to 5 am which means I have to be home every night at 10 pm. Unless I'm trucking,” Barber notes, saying he has to report all of his time spent working to his probation officer.

“But then, it was just a week or so ago that the Crown announced … we'll possibly have a trial date for a retrial, an appeal hearing with the three judge panel in the Appeals Court of Toronto, in the spring of 2027. So we'll [have] completed our sentence, and then we'll face the possibility of a retrial,” Barber told The Post Millennial, insisting that the Crown is determined to see the duo incarcerated.

“They asked for 10 years right off the bat, then they dropped it to eight. I'm assuming they're going to ask for five now … You know, the process is the punishment,” Barber says.

“I spoke to a retired RCMP officer yesterday. I was parked in a little town in Saskatchewan, you know, for the night, and the door knocked, and it was a retired RCMP member, and he said, ‘You know, I got out of the force because of the reasons of why the system is just kind of corrupt.’. But he encouraged me to stand proud.”

When asked if this doesn’t look like double jeopardy, Tamara Lich agrees it certainly does look like that. “Well, you're exactly right, and that's one of the crazy things about this situation. My sentence will be served January 21 st of 2027 … so my sentence will already be served before we even get to request leave to appeal. As you know, I am appealing my conviction. The crown prosecutor is appealing the acquittals on the two intimidation charges as well as my sentence. So you know, when all is said and done, let's say, for example, let's say they win, and there's another trial. I mean, we're still looking two-and-a-half years probably down the road before that could even happen,” she says.

“It's frustrating for Chris and I; you know, we've been convicted. We're serving our sentences. That's fine. We're being held accountable, appealing that decision, obviously. But we still have a federal government that illegally, unlawfully, and unconstitutionally invoked the Emergencies Act, and they have yet to be held accountable for their most egregious act against Canadian citizens.”

The Crown continues to treat Barber and Lich like hardened criminals guilty of committing the most serious crimes in Canada’s Criminal Code. Barber says the Crown has appointed Emily Marrocco to argue for a retrial. “She's a Crown counsel for the Crown's Law Office, and she's normally a criminal lawyer and she specializes in the appeal process.”

“So usually Emily, she prosecutes a range of offenses, including homicides, human trafficking, firearms, drug trafficking, internet child exploitation, sexual violence, and youth criminal organization offenses … and I fit into this category allegedly. So does Tamara, where the government has to have a lawyer that usually prosecutes all those things that I just listed and now they're going to drop down to the worst case of all – mischief.”

Lich just endured almost a week of criticism for attending the US Ambassador’s Reception in Ottawa. Peter Hoekstra invited Lich as a “media personality.”

“There's a lot of people that are big, big mad over my appearance there. But I mean, you need to understand that I cannot leave my house. I cannot walk off of my sidewalk at my residence without permission from my probation officer and Medicine Hat Community Corrections. Every single thing I do has to be completely documented from the route I'm taking to the flight I'm on to where I'm stopping for a bathroom break to where I'm going to stop and get fuel. Every single thing has to be 100% documented and approved,” she says.

Lich says the anger from the Left over her attendance really has nothing to do with concerns she is somehow violating her house arrest but that she continues to refuse to live in defeat or to renounce the trucker protest that arguably broke the Covid mandates in Canada, certainly inspired people around the world and ultimately saved lives – given what we now know about the toxicity of the vaccine and that it was never either safe or effective.

“The reason that they're losing their minds so much is because I am not miserable, I am not broken, I am not suffering and I am not demoralized. I am just that kind of person that will make the most out of every situation. This is what it is … But it's still quite funny to watch … the tolerant inclusive groups that are bullying me essentially.”

Lich told me that she is actively supporting Alberta independence and she has notably appeared at a number of events to publicly say so.

Barber says he yearns for the Canada that he can see in the rearview window, the country he was raised in but that has incrementally disappeared under the regimes of Prime Ministers Justin Trudeau and Mark Carney, who have forced mass migration on Canadians and introduced increasingly draconian censorship legislation that now threatens basic free speech

He says the loss of freedom in Canada has been like “a dog being chained to a tree and the government removes a link off the chain every day. The dog doesn't realize that he's slowly losing his freedom until it's too late, and that's exactly where we are right now. There's maybe two feet of chain left, Canada and you're giving that up. Unfortunately, we need somebody to come in with a cutting torch and hack that chain in half and and let people live again because the government right now, they control every aspect of your life,” Barber notes.

“No, this is definitely not the Canada that we grew up in.”