Ontario government tries to criminalize giving money to the striking truckers
The polite land of Canada is revealing itself in a way I never expected to see in my lifetime: the ordinary people, still polite, are willing to mount the biggest anti-COVID tyranny protest in the world while many of the politicians, including Justin Trudeau, are proving to be stone-cold totalitarians. The latest effort to destroy the truckers comes from Ontario, where Doug Ford's government managed to get a court to rule that it's illegal to give millions in donations to the truckers' convoy. This probably won't end well...for the government.
To catch you up on events, Trudeau has imposed some of the strictest COVID restrictions in the free world on Canada. For two years, they've been quarantined, isolated, barred from worship, their businesses destroyed, and bullied into taking experimental vaccines of dubious efficacy but with known, and serious, side-effects. And throughout those two years, as in America, the white-collar class that obsesses about diversity and transgenderism has spent the time comfortably at home, working away at their computers, while the working classes have pretty much seen their livelihoods and lives destroyed.
Amongst the hardest hit in Canada has been the truckers. When COVID was still new and scary, they kept working, keeping Canadians supplied with both necessities and luxuries, all to seal-like claps of applause from the monied classes, including Trudeau himself. Added to that fear was the fact that truck driving is an extremely hard job, one that is lonely, physically taxing, often dangerous, and poorly compensated. But still, they did it.
However, when Trudeau announced that truckers would have to show their vaccine passports to return to their own country when carrying goods between the U.S. and Canada, that was the straw that broke the trucker camels' backs. Although most are vaccinated, this final indignity was too much. The truckers began their epic convoy, which captured the imagination of those in the world yearning to be free of despotic politicians and bureaucrats.
Image: Canadian truckers shut down the bridge. YouTube screen grab.
Trudeau's first response (of course) was to run away. That's what tyrants usually do, or try to do, when their people finally push back (e.g., Saddam Hussein, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, Idi Amin, and Ashraf Ghani). Then, without any proof, he painted the truckers as racist haters because that's always the left's fallback. Since then, Trudeau has refused to speak to the truckers, preferring instead to keep calling them names.
Meanwhile, on the ground in Ottawa, police stole gas cans, so citizens brought more:
The Ottawa chief of police boasted that he was able to get GoFundMe to seize the funds that people around the world donated to the truckers:
That's when the truckers did what they should have done from the start, which was to set up a fund at GiveSendGo. The fund now has $8.6 million (U.S.) for the truckers. That sum is a nightmare for a government determined to destroy the protest. Ontario's attorney general, therefore, found a compliant judge willing to say it was illegal to give money to the truckers (who have been completely peaceful, not violent, unless you consider bounce houses and horn-honking a threat to civil order):
BREAKING: The Ontario government says it has effectively frozen all donations made to the trucker convoy through GiveSendGo. It is now a criminal offence to have any "dealing" with money from donations through this platform. pic.twitter.com/EhWWqe1V6J
— Andrew Lawton (@AndrewLawton) February 10, 2022
Ezra Levant explains the implications of this order — including the fact that it was done in secret and almost certainly doesn't meet the legal standards. Because his thread is so long, I've included it at the end of this post.
Unlike GoFundMe, which was dying to be intimidated so it would be spared the indignity of funding something liberty-oriented, GiveSendGo is standing firm:
Know this! Canada has absolutely ZERO jurisdiction over how we manage our funds here at GiveSendGo. All funds for EVERY campaign on GiveSendGo flow directly to the recipients of those campaigns, not least of which is The Freedom Convoy campaign.
— GiveSendGo (@GiveSendGo) February 11, 2022
This is the kind of thing that creates a huge opening for Bitcoin, a currency over which the Canadian government has no control. I don't know if GiveSendGo and the truckers will go that route, but it's possible.
The biggest problem is the government's: arresting the truckers will not make the trucks go away. You need truckers to do that. Slashing the tires, as one CNN analyst suggested, won't make them go away, either, especially on the bridge separating Canada from Detroit. Likewise, robbing truckers of gas won't make them go away. I wouldn't be surprised if private citizens aren't spiriting cold truckers to their homes, just as good people have hidden warriors against tyranny since time immemorial.
Some of the provinces have figured out what will make the truckers go away: return stolen liberty to the Canadian people. Trudeau is good at tyranny, bad at liberty, and totally lacking in wisdom. It's to be hoped that his fellow party members, some of whom are peeling away, are able to get him to yield before things get ugly.
The last words go to Tucker Carlson, followed by the Ezra Levant thread:
2. Here's the link to s. 490.8 of the Criminal Code: https://t.co/LKIlDtfkX7 It's a "a restraint order... in respect of any offence-related property". The kind of thing you'd use to seize a drug-dealer's speedboat, or cash.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
4. Ex parte hearings run contrary to the legal maxim "Audi alteram partem" -- listen to the other side. Our entire legal system is based on having both sides (or all sides) heard. That can't happen if the other party can't be found; or if police need the element of surprise.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
6. But look at this: s. 490.8(2) says three things must be shown:
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
a) the indictable offence to which the offence-related property relates;
b) the person who is believed to be in possession of the offence-related property; and
c) a description of the offence-related property.
8. In Canada, we use slightly different terminology than Americans. Indictable offences are the most serious offences in the Criminal Code. Summary conviction offences are the more minor ones. Some crimes can be prosecuted either way -- it's up to the prosecutor.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
10. But even if someone did, look at that second condition. That the indictable offence was related to the money.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
How could that possibly be made out? The money is being raised by Tamara Lich. Here's how she describes its purpose on GiveSendGo: https://t.co/iOfFaxQy6N
12. So how do you connect ("relate") a big bank account created by Tamara Lich with some indictable offence -- that, as far as I know, has not happened? Is there some conspiracy? No. But there are conspiracy theories, most of them coming from Justin Trudeau and Gerald Butts.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
14. But an indictable offence? Related to the money? I don't believe it.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
16. So, based only on the government's say-so "if [a judge is] satisfied that there are reasonable grounds to believe that the property is offence-related property", he can order it to be frozen.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
18. So that's where we are. A surprise hearing, in secret, with only the government in the room with the judge. Allegations (which have not yet been made public, to my knowledge). And a judge who concludes it's reasonable -- nothing more.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
But then the truckers get their say.
20. And then they can come back to court and say what they would have said, had they been given notice in the first place. They would have the right to see all of the evidence put to the judge, and to cross-examine any witnesses (typically a police officer).
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
22. Perhaps there was some secret recordings of some plot to use the money for some criminal purpose. I mean, I guess it's possible. Tamara Lich seems pretty chill to me. And it's obvious that the money was needed for legitimate purposes -- gas, food, medicine, lawyers.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
24. Was it just politics? Was it just press clippings of screeching politicians and journalists claiming they were "threatened" by the horn-honking? Was it just conspiracy theories, like Trudeau's CBC, saying that Putin was behind the whole thing? pic.twitter.com/HVgJAJC113
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
26. Who knows? Not a single judge in Canada has yet ruled against any substantial aspect of any lockdown law or order. Not one. So maybe the judge is a true Branch Covidian, and believes any paranoid threat. Could be.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
28. But you can't rule out the simplest answer -- that the government was under such political pressure to shut down the truckers, by any means or method necessary, that they simply decided to deceive the court -- anything to make these truckers go away, to hell with the law.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
30. The world has been watching us more closely than ever before. They see the peaceful protesters and the bizarre accusations made by Trudeau. People have taken the measure of his credibility. Globally, he's seen as a lightweight, an incompetent, a liar a tyrant.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022
31. This court ruling only confirms all of those things. It makes Canada look like a banana republic backwater, where the ruling elites crush peaceful opposition through brute force. Trudeau always said he admires China and Cuba. This plays to his stereotype.
— Ezra Levant ЁЯНБЁЯЪЫ (@ezralevant) February 11, 2022