OTTAWA –
“Freedom Convoy” organizers are anticipated to testify at the general public inquiry into the federal authorities’s use of the Emergencies Act beginning at present.
The witnesses are anticipated to make clear the conception of the weekslong demonstrations that gridlocked Ottawa streets final winter.
Several of the protest organizers, together with Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and Pat King, are dealing with felony expenses associated to their involvement.
Barber is anticipated to be the primary to testify.
The inquiry is investigating the occasions main as much as the federal authorities’s emergency declaration Feb. 14, weeks into demonstrations that had gridlocked downtown Ottawa and spilled into border blockades elsewhere.
It has up to now painted an image of confusion and chaos amongst police forces and ranges of presidency as officers tried to determine reply.
By all accounts up to now, the thought for the convoy to Ottawa seems to have been impressed by a TikTok video of two truck drivers.
Brigitte Belton, who is anticipated to testify after Barber, was one of many first folks to conceive of the thought.
Barber was an early organizer, driving from his Saskatchewan dwelling to Ottawa in January, with Lich at his facet for a lot of the journey.
The two are co-accused of felony mischief, obstructing police and counselling others to commit mischief and intimidation for his or her actions through the protest.
Protesters started to reach in Ottawa on Jan. 28 to precise their anger and opposition to the federal authorities and to COVID-19 restrictions, together with vaccine mandates.
The protest rapidly developed into what police and authorities officers have described as an all-out occupation, with demonstrators blocking site visitors, blaring truck horns and establishing camp in metropolis streets.
The space outdoors Parliament Hill was solely cleared weeks later, after Ottawa invoked the federal Emergencies Act on Feb. 14.
Public Order Emergency Commission hearings started in mid-October and are anticipated to proceed till late November.
Lich has attended for almost all of the hearings, sitting in a public viewing space with mates and a small handful of supporters. Barber arrived in Ottawa final week and briefly attended one of many hearings.
Late Monday, the fee signalled that it intends to name Jeremy MacKenzie, the founding father of on-line group “Diagolon,” to testify on Friday through videoconference.
MacKenzie was current for the protests in Ottawa and the group consists of different members who supported the convoy.
MacKenzie’s lawyer has made an utility to the fee asking that he testify within the absence of the general public and events or beneath a publication ban and saying that his presence in Ottawa final winter was “lawful and peaceful.”
He is presently in a Saskatchewan jail and was denied launch earlier this month after being arrested in Nova Scotia on a Canada-wide warrant.
He was charged with assault, pointing a firearm, mischief and utilizing a restricted weapon in a careless method after police obtained a report about an alleged assault close to Viscount, Sask., in November 2021.
MacKenzie was additionally charged in Nova Scotia with 13 firearms offences in January, and with harassment and intimidation in March after an anti-mask protest outdoors the house of Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of well being.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Nov.1, 2022.