Monday’s pre-trial arguments in the trial of Chris Carbert and Anthony Olienick – the two remaining defendants of the Coutts Four – are still under a publication ban which will be lifted when the jury is selected.
Carbert and Olienick are being charged with conspiring to murder, and are accused of specifically targeting RCMP officers. They are also charged with weapons offences and mischief over $5,000.
The charges against the two relate to their involvement with the Coutts protest and blockade of 2022, a demonstration linked to the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa, ON, via shared opposition to government edicts, orders, and mandates marketed as “public health” measures in response to COVID-19.
Rebel News spoke with two supporters of the defendants who shared their rationales for attending the proceedings.
Chelle, a Lethbridge resident and founder of Freedom Hub Lethbridge, said Canadians’ constitutional rights to free speech, expression, association, due procees and property rights are under threat in the context of the prosecution of Carbert and Olienick.
Stevland, a resident of BC observing the trial, said the prosecution of Carbert and Olienick was motivated by political considerations to protect the federal government’s “public health” policies in relation to COVID-19.
In January, Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley determined that Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, to further empower law enforcement to end the aforementioned protests, was unawful and violative of constitutional rights.
The Coutts protest slowed – and at some points completely blocked – traffic across the Canada-U.S. border at the Coutts-Sweetgrass border crossing linking Alberta and Montana. It preceded Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act, to broaden powers of law enforcement to suppress the two demonstrations.
Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin, the two other men of the Coutts Four, accepted plea deals to lesser charges in February after initially being charged with involvement in the alleged conspiracy to commit murder alongside Carbert and Olienick.
