On Friday, Saskatchewan truck driver Chris Barber took to X and posted a photo of “Big Red,” his 2003 Kenworth W900Lr. With it, he included a reminder of Canada’s upcoming federal election April 28.
“This is my livelihood, the breadwinner that has kept my family fed for years, and the crown seeks to destroy my life and future because we took a stand against tyranny. Government overreach at its finest. Our Canada under #Liberal rule!!!!! Vote smart #Canada”
The Convoy was the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history, and these proceedings now hold the title of longest mischief trial in the history of the nation.
As one of the faces of 2022’s Freedom Convoy, the largest and most effective populist uprising in recent history, Barber has been subject to three years of vicious lawfare from the Liberal-controlled Canadian government.
And now that same government wants to take “Big Red,” which has become a symbol of the Convoy.
The truck stops here
On Thursday, April 3, a ruling came down in an Ottawa courtroom against Barber and another prominent Convoy protester, Tamara Lich, a grandmother and musician from Alberta.
Ontario Court Justice Heather Perkins-McVey gave her final judgments on a number of charges stemming from the three-week protest in February 2022, where Barber, Lich, and thousands of others exercised their once-cherished rights to freedom of expression, hurting no one and causing no property damage as they demanded to meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his underlings and negotiate an end to Trudeau’s punishing COVID regime.
Perkins-McVey acknowledged the peaceful nature of the protest in her ruling, despite presiding over 45 days of government testimony spread across 20 months in a Kafka-esque show trial where the government argued over the minutiae of TikTok videos and the meaning of slogans such as “Hold the Line!”
Court-sanctioned ‘mischief’
This entire situation has been one for the record books. The Convoy was the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history, and these proceedings now hold the title of longest mischief trial in the history of the nation.
Prosecutors failed to convince Perkins-McVey of most of their cases against Lich and Barber, who were found not guilty of intimidation, along with other fraudulent and spurious charges.
Lich and Barber were, however, found guilty of mischief, and Barber additionally was found guilty of disobeying a court order regarding the honking of truckers’ air horns, which became a rallying cry of the protest and an instant online meme. Barber had made a video telling his followers to honk their horns in defiance of the order if, and only if, their trucks were approached by a large group of police officers. This context didn’t move Perkins-McVey.
The problem with mischief, as a criminal charge in Canada, is that it is a “property” crime, and a conviction can land you in prison for a maximum of 10 years.
What was the property here? The public property of the streets of Ottawa.
Hamas exception
In a very peculiar part of the ruling, McVey asserts that the public’s enjoyment of the use of city streets took precedence over the Convoy’s right to protest. It ought be noted that since the tragic events in Israel in October 2023, supporters of Hamas have protested every single week, unencumbered by the government, nor have they been accused of interrupting the enjoyment of those streets.
At the conclusion of the ruling, Justice Perkins-McVey sought to issue sentencing the following day, but on the objection of the prosecutors, a later date was set to … set another date.
Prosecutors wanted time to assemble more victim impact statements, as if three years of hearing from Ottawa’s bureaucrats about the delusions of phantom honking wasn’t enough to assemble them all. Maybe they needed to hear about the honking again, just one more time. In case anyone forgot.
‘Red’ notice
On April 16, we found out the punishment that the crown seeks against Lich and Barber is two years in a federal clink, and, in a request that is clearly vindictive and requires an essay of its own to unpack, the crown is seeking to seize “Big Red.”
Barber’s rig had become a symbol of the Freedom Convoy, featured in thousands of pictures, videos, and memes, as it led the Western Canadian Convoy to Ottawa. Barber has owned and operated that truck since 2003 and put 3.4 million kilometers (roughly 2.1 million miles) on it, mostly hauling heavy agricultural equipment across his home province of Saskatchewan and picking up new equipment from factories in America for his customers.
In the 22 years Barber has owned and operated that truck, he has raised his children in it over trips too many to count, and when his dog Buddy was approaching the end of his life, the poor old dog was put down while lying on the passenger seat: Buddy’s favorite place to be.
With the mischief conviction, Barber may not be allowed back into the United States to serve his customers, a pretty major blow to his business — and punishment enough, in a way.
A new low
What justice is served in this move by the Canadian government? In all the hundreds of prosecutions of other Convoy protesters, many of which remain ongoing, never has the government sought to seize anyone’s property.
Perhaps authorities did enough of that during the protest itself, when they froze hundreds of people’s bank accounts and locked them out of economic life altogether, something that likewise happened to Barber. The actions of the banks were so comprehensive that drivers working for Barber’s small company were calling him when the bank freezings started, to tell him the fuel cards for their trucks no longer worked.
It seems like the government is trying to send a message to every Canadian that dissent will not be tolerated at all and that if you defy the government diktat, the authorities will crush you, your family, and your very own business.
Barack Obama famously dismissed the efforts of American business owners with his comment, “You didn’t build that.” It seems that the Canadian government, under the Liberal Party of the very recently departed Justin Trudeau, is building on Obama’s attitude.
He built that
It doesn’t matter that Chris Barber did build something. Never mind the time and blood and sweat and sacrifice he put into his successful small trucking company. Our leaders can come and take it all away with the swipe of a pen.
Truly and terribly evil — and unbecoming a once supposedly free country.
Lawyers for Barber have filed for a stay of proceedings. It’s a pretty long shot, but if granted, this gross abuse of state power and capricious message-sending will be stopped.
Meanwhile, in a TikTok video thanking his supporters, Barber paid tribute to “Big Red:”
I bought this truck brand-new in 2003, November 26 to be exact, and I’ve got 3.4 million kilometers on this truck as of today. I have raised my children in this truck. I have trucked all over North America with this bad boy. It is a piece of me. It even has the little foot marks from where Jonathan as a toddler used to kick the dash with his little winter boots in the car seat.
Click here to watch the message in its entirety.
A version of this article previously appeared on the Autonomous Truck(er)s Substack.
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