Freedom truckers being 'punished' with lengthy trial, delays, says defendant Tamara Lich

Freedom Convoy personality Tamara Lich said Friday that her joint trial with Chris Barber has again recessed and she doesn’t expect the defense to begin summarizing its case until “hopefully 10 days in mid-March” 2024. That means a verdict shouldn’t be expected until at least the summer.

One should bear in mind that this trial began on the Tuesday after the Labor Day long weekend in September. 

The pair are charged with mischief, counseling others to commit mischief, intimidation, and obstructing police as members of the Freedom Convoy that polarized residents of Ottawa in 2022 and arguably began to roll back Covid mandates.

“I don't know why it's taking so long but it's true what they say in the Canadian legal system: the punishment is the process,” Lich told The Post Millennial in an exclusive interview. 

The Alberta woman said the punishment is also meant for any Canadian who decides to protest policies that are being promoted by governments that would prefer to ignore criticism of their narrative – especially when it involves Covid-19 mandates. Lich was at the center of the January to February 2022 Freedom Convoy protest against those mandates that brought down the full force of the federal government when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act on Feb. 14, 2022.

Lich says the legal battle has left her undeterred and she is committed to fighting for justice.

“Unfortunately for them, they picked on the wrong woman because I am not going to back down and they do not scare me and they do not intimidate me and so they have no power over me. But what they're trying to do is scare everybody else – right? Well, don't do this.”

But the activist says that’s not what Canada is all about and that’s what the Freedom Convoy showed the world.

“But, I mean, we're Canadians: some of the most positive people on the planet.”

“You know when we started organizing this we had no idea how it was going to take off and no idea that it would go global. You know that was a shock to us but it really did it and resonated all around the world.”

Lich thanks The Democracy Fund for assisting her with her legal fees,”but all the cost of us traveling back and forth staying there, eating there, all comes out of our pocket. So, you know, it is ‘lawfare,’  they want to deplete your resources and demoralize you and intimidate you and unfortunately for them in my case, it's not going to work.”

The activist says the Freedom Convoy protest has become a watershed in Canadian political history despite Canadians “being bombarded by a lot of nonsense legislation and policies right now.”

“And I don't think that that's by accident since I think the convoy was the beginning of the end. It was like a great wake-up. So everything that they had kind of planned on implementing they had to speed up and get it through faster but the great thing about the convoy was it opened up so many people's eyes.”

Lich says she continues to witness former opponents of the Freedom Convoy telling her that they have changed their minds.

“People still come up to me all the time, and they tell me their stories, and I can't tell you how many people have said, ‘You know, during the convoy, I didn't like you and I called you a lot of nasty names, and I didn't know what you were doing there.’”

“So people are getting involved and taking action and I think it's very positive. I mean, we are getting bombarded with a lot of negativity right now.”

But she says she has noted a “shift in the reporting” from the mainstream media “probably within the last six months.”

“As more and more evidence comes out that shows that … we were following the law and we did our very, very best to keep people safe … I've noticed a shift in the tone of some of the mainstream media reporting because I think they know they lost the narrative like they lost the plot.”

“Read the room,” Lich says.

“And so I think it's softening a little bit, you know, I mean, they still grab the headline-catching quotes, like, ‘Downtown residents were terrorized,’ or you know what I mean, but I think for the most part, they're doing much better."

She notes that the mainstream media wasn’t doing its job when it reported that the convoy was responsible for setting an apartment building ablaze.

She says the accusations that Trudeau and many Liberals made that the Convoy was composed of “Nazis” or inspired by “racists and misogynists” has felt “like a bit of Karma” because it’s “coming back to bite these guys in the butt.”

Lich points to the senior members of the Liberal government inviting and celebrating a former Waffen SS soldier in the House of Commons as just one example of that.

“I couldn’t believe that Nazi in the House,” Lich says.

“What they accused us of doing is all coming back on them: like taking money from foreign entities. Well, we found out about four or five months ago that the Trudeau Foundation was taking money from Beijing. They accused us of being infiltrated by the Russians and having foreign interference. Well, hello: China!”

Lich says she watches Question Period in the House of Commons and she’s shocked over how detached some Members of Parliament seem to operate outside the bounds of ordinary people.

“They're just so out of touch with reality. It's all word salad and virtue-signaling nonsense. Like Question Period is a great example. Wouldn't you rather turn on the TV and see two sides of the House work together to solve some problems? Instead of this – what is akin to watching WWE wrestling? I mean, it's ridiculous. You're running a country. This isn't kindergarten play time.”

What’s ahead for Tamara Lich?

“That's a great question. I asked myself that every day.”

“My focus right now is … [on] everybody else that needs help fundraising for legal fees, because there's a lot of people that have trials coming up or hearings coming up, or fines to pay that don't have, you know, an aid organization.”

“And so I really want to try and help as many people as we possibly can. And then I don't know what's going to happen,” Lich says.

“I would like to continue advocating for Canadians' rights and freedoms. I mean, that's something I believe that we always have to be vigilant about, and then I think we've lost that and this is why we're at where we're at. You know, we kind of dropped our guard on that a little bit. And I think that we need people who are going to stand up for those rights and be vocal about it.”