OTTAWA –
Benjamin Dichter says he helped promote and co-ordinate a cryptocurrency fundraiser for protesters who descended upon Ottawa to oppose COVID-19 mandates final winter.
He tells a public inquiry that he got here to the capital metropolis in January on the invitation of Tamara Lich, one of many organizers of the “Freedom Convoy,” to be a spokesman for the protesters.
The Public Order Emergency Commission is analyzing the Liberal authorities’s determination to invoke the Emergencies Act in mid-February to assist clear what had turn into a weeks-long occupation of downtown Ottawa.
Dichter says he got here to Ottawa to with the purpose of ending pandemic-related mandates and spreading a message of “peace, love, freedom and unity.”
He says he ended up in battle with different “Freedom Convoy” organizers over messaging.
Two different protest organizers, Lich and James Bauder, are additionally scheduled to look earlier than the fee that’s holding public hearings in Ottawa till Nov. 25.
This report by The Canadian Press was first printed Nov. 3, 2022.