Sheila Gunn-Reid and Robert Kraychik examine the Tamara Lich and Chris Barber trial, where the prosecution struggled to link evidence—like an 11.5-minute body cam clip showing no protester violence—to charges, despite Judge skepticism over witness credibility. They contrast the Freedom Convoy (Jan–Feb 2022) with the One Million March for Children, framing the latter as a unified push against "LGBTQ indoctrination" while critics call Trudeau’s leadership weak, fueling global authoritarian emboldenment. [Automatically generated summary]
What's going on with the Tamara Leach and Chris Barber trial in Ottawa?
We've got the journalists covering it to break it all down for us.
I'm Sheila Gunn-Reed, and you're watching The Gunn Show.
For those of you who don't know, and I don't know how you possibly couldn't, the Freedom Convoy of 2022 was, I think, the single largest human rights demonstration in Canadian history.
Tens of thousands of Canadians joined the trucker-led protest, which landed in the nation's capital late January through to the middle of February, 2022.
They were there to oppose vaccine mandates and other COVID restrictions all across the country.
It was a peaceful movement for freedom.
It was so peaceful that the streets were cleaner in Ottawa than before they came when the truckers left and crime actually went down while the truckers and their supporters were in the nation's capital.
However, Trudeau never met with them and that guy will attend the opening of an envelope.
In fact, it was much worse than that.
Trudeau and his government used the never before used Emergencies Act to euthanize the protest, to criminalize the peaceful demonstration.
The Emergencies Act is a counterterrorism law.
It gives authorities extraordinary powers when the existing authorities do not have the tools to deal with the crisis at hand.
It's meant for Pearl Harbor and 9-11 level events.
It's not meant for street parties and shiny hockey and people in their nation's capital, in the nation's town square, speaking truth to power.
Courtroom Confusion00:15:08
The convoy leaders, Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, were charged with mischief and other mischief-related offenses.
Tamara herself was held for approximately 50 days in custody for a non-violent offense that if she were convicted of, she would never see the inside of a jail cell because her crime was not mischief.
Her crime, obviously, was embarrassing the government and providing more opposition to Justin Trudeau than the opposition parties had ever done in Justin Trudeau's eight years in office.
We currently have a journalist named Robert Krajek covering the trial of Tamara and Chris in Ottawa as it winds its way through the court.
And he's been in the courtroom every single day, taking meticulous notes and reporting back in outstanding detail these complicated court proceedings in a way that normal non-court types might understand.
So joining me now is my friend and colleague, Rebel News reporter, Robert Krychek.
So joining me now is my friend and colleague, Robert Krychek.
Now, Robert has been doing really an incredible job of being in the courtroom and documenting exactly what is going on inside the courtroom of the Tamara Leach and Chris Barber trial.
And, you know, independent media has really led the way on the convoy, but also on the coverage of the convoy.
Robert, tell me what the courtroom is like before we get into the fine details of what's happening in the courtroom and what I think are probably the failings of the Crown's impossible case against Tamara and Chris.
But what's the courtroom like?
Who's in there every single day?
Well, we've got on one side, we've got media on one side.
So you've got the usual suspects.
They're the largest organizations in Canada.
You've got CTV, Global, CBC.
You've also got what we can call, let's say, dissident news media, alternative news media.
So I'm there, of course, representing Rebel News.
We've also got some people there from post-millennial.
We've also got some people there from the Epoch Times.
I've seen some other people, maybe I'll use the term bloggers.
I don't mean that in a diminutive way, but people that are not affiliated with a particular organization and just do their own work under their own names on Twitter.
Maybe they've got a websites and so forth.
And then the majority of the courtroom is composed of observers.
Almost all of them, maybe aside from one, is composed of supporters of both Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.
Now, I'm reliably informed by hand-wringing maniacs subsidized by Justin Trudeau and the mainstream media that Tamara Leach, of course, was public enemy number one and a plague upon the city of Ottawa.
And Ottawa residents just had to be defended from her.
Are there many Ottawa residents in the courtroom?
Again, I've only met one resident in there who I would call a detractor from Tamara Leach and Chris Barber more broadly.
Let's let's say the Freedom Convoy.
She was not sympathetic.
I've spoken to her several times.
So she's, let's say, outnumbered by maybe 30 people who tend to sort of alternate.
So just on logistics alone, to your point, there's literally nobody there from Ottawa who's just there to observe justice against this person that put them under siege.
According to Justin Trudeau or former Mayor Jim Watson, the usual suspects.
You know, what a great way to put that.
Yeah.
I mean, this apparent, according to the mainstream media, this was a siege of Ottawa.
You would think that there would be some interest from the victims of the siege, but apparently there is none because it doesn't seem that I would think a lot of the opposition, from what I've seen, and I watched this pretty closely, was kind of astroturfed.
It was the same people recycled in the media over and over and over again, complaining about the convoy.
And I'm glad to see that evidenced in the courtroom.
Speaking of evidence in the courtroom, how about that for a segue?
What's it like in the courtroom?
How do you think this court case is going?
Because from what I can understand, and again, I'm a layman, but I also do a lot of court reporting.
How do you think the prosecution's case is going?
I feel like they were given an impossible case, maybe like a sack of garbage of a case.
And now they're forced to go forward with it because of the predicament that they have been put in politically.
Oh, no, there's two laypersons here.
I'm a lay person too, but I've also got a mind, and I'll pay attention to this, so I'll share with you what I've observed.
So far, in terms of where we've gone procedurally in the trial, we're still going through the prosecution's evidence, which includes invitations to witnesses.
So obviously that's the first order of business.
Once we go through all of them, then the defense will have the opportunity, if it chooses to do so, to introduce its own counter evidence, introduce its own witnesses.
And to answer your question about how it's going, it's not going well for the prosecution at all.
This is not just one man's opinion observing from the outside.
I can corroborate this with observations I've made inside the courtroom.
One major theme that's been going on since day one is that every single intervention from the judge, and she is not just this observer.
She's relatively involved, I would say.
She's not a wilting flower.
Every intervention, aside from maybe a handful, have been in essence a reprimand of the prosecution's conduct and/or something supportive towards the defense's position.
And a major sub-theme of that is she is challenging the relevance or legitimacy of evidence introduced by the prosecution, particularly in the form of testimony from its witnesses.
I'll just give you one example, although this is going on many, many times.
So, so far, all the witnesses have been, aside from one, these sort of bureaucratic police officer types, right?
And a lot of them have these log books or record books where they keep notes from their daily duties.
And given that most of them are in these sort of supervisory roles where they're not actually on the ground dealing with events in the context of the Freedom Convoy, they're getting information intelligence, as they call it, that comes up the chain of command.
So, when they share, oh, my notebook says this or that happened, or apparently this happened on that date, it's always second, or third, or fourth hand.
It's always coming from a far distance, removed from them in their offices in Ottawa.
And secondarily, it's not something that they observed or experienced firsthand.
So, again, the testimonies from these witnesses has often been critiqued by the judge.
Now, remember, there's no jury here.
So, when the judge says that this witness that I'm about to hear, based on what I just mentioned to you, the fact that this is second, third, fourth hand information, it's hearsay, she says it has very little to no weight, but she'll allow it to proceed.
But again, like this is an ongoing theme: the challenge of relevance to the actual charges at hand.
I'll go into more detail about that later.
Sure.
You know, I've heard criticisms of the prosecution's case in that it seems as though they want to put the convoy on trial, as opposed to Tamara and Chris for the things they're charged.
It seems that they want a political trial in the public sphere, as opposed to focusing on the evidence directed at Tamara and Chris and the evidence on which the charges are based.
Yeah, this is amazing.
Okay, so in the opening statement from the prosecution on day one, they literally said, This is not an exact quote, but the guy said this, his name is Tim Radcliffe.
This is not a prosecution of the convoy.
Right.
But here we are three weeks in, and basically all of the testimony, all the evidence has been about what happened during the convoy.
So there's this massive disconnect between the opening, one of the claims in the opening statement and how events have unfolded thus far.
Moreover, like, let's just imagine how this might play out if it was something that made sense.
You would imagine that you'd have video and/or witnesses saying, I saw this person at this location on this date at this time doing this thing.
Right.
And you would think that the prosecution would then explain to the judge to make it clear, that's what this witness is claiming.
And now, let me link it to the charge.
We haven't seen any of that.
It's just these cops saying, again, these sort of bureaucratic cops saying what they've heard from their subordinates in terms of what may have happened.
I'll give you one other example that was, I'll never forget, jumped out at me.
There was this montage, 11 and a half minute video that was played basically on the first day of proceedings.
And it was composed of video that was collected primarily from body cam footage from police officers who were deployed to the Freedom Convoy for what they call crowd control.
And in this 11 and a half minute video, there was not a second of any violence from demonstrators towards police officers or anyone.
Now, the judge actually intervened.
I think it was day three, day four, somewhere in the first week.
And she actually made a point that she watched that video.
And the only violence she saw was one instance where a police officer struck a demonstrator.
And that goes to the heart of your question earlier about how this is sort of a prosecution of the demonstration itself rather than the specific individuals being charged.
You know, that is astounding to me that finally somebody has acknowledged the violence from the state directed at the protesters because we saw extreme violence.
In fact, the only violence that I saw during the Freedom Convoy, and I paid acute attention to it, was from police directed at the peaceful convoy protesters.
They were meeting peaceful protesters who were singing and chanting with, you know, riot horses, with batons in the case of Alexa Lavoie, and again, with pepper balls in the case of Alexa Lavoie.
I mean, I mean, it's finally, you know, like finally to hear a judge say, actually, the violence was not the protesters, that heartens me.
I don't know how the court case is going to shake out, but that is the first time that somebody official has actually acknowledged the violence, only going in the one direction.
There was one other instance in court where it wasn't an acknowledgement of violence going in one direction, but it still will maybe put a little smile on your face.
So one of the witnesses that was introduced by the prosecution, again, that's only where we're at so far.
Forget the guy's name, Kim Ayot.
So Kim Ayat worked at the time and still does as, I don't know the official title, but he's a city supervisor.
He works for the city of Ottawa.
He's in charge of emergency services.
So the chief of police reports to him.
The chief of paramedics, the chief of firefighters, the chief of our bylaw officers reports to him.
He's the overseer of all of that.
And he was cross-examined.
I think it was by Lawrence Greenspawn, who's the attorney defending Tamara Leach, whether there was any violence from demonstrators towards police that had come to his attention.
He said no.
So even a witness who himself is likely invested and personally supportive of this prosecution under oath stated that there was no violence from demonstrators towards police officers under oath.
Wouldn't it be just absolute political egg on Justin Trudeau's face if these two are not convicted of the very minor things that they're charged with?
And yet he used a counterterrorism law called the Emergencies Act that's never been used before.
That's supposed to be reserved for 9-11 and Pearl Harbor level events.
And he can't even get the leadership of that event convicted of mischief.
Yeah, so the Emergencies Act, obviously, its antecedent legislation was the War Measures Act.
And it was used by one guy.
What was that guy's name?
Pierre Trudeau.
So yeah, there's a little bit of a lineage there in terms of exercising this drama.
Although maybe you could argue for the FLQ crisis, it was legitimate.
Whatever.
I'm not going to litigate that.
Absolutely, this would be a humiliation of Justin Trudeau.
And I want to give you some speculation.
Now, I can't prove this, but I know it to be true.
I've just been a deep political observer.
The idea that any of these guys on the stand, and all of them are these, again, bureaucratic city officials, ostensibly they have discretion.
But we know one of the themes of the modern era, which includes Canada, is that we're becoming increasingly centralized and consolidated.
We're becoming increasingly micromanaged from this heart of the beast, in our case in Ottawa.
And we know that Justin Trudeau was on TV every day saying he's working with the relevant authorities.
He's going to take care of this.
So the idea that these charges are not coming directly, or at least let me rephrase that, at least the direction to place these charges against both Leech and Barber, the idea that it didn't come from the PMO is absurd.
Obviously, the prime minister's office is directing this.
And I'll even give you a shred of evidence that corroborates my position.
It was one of the police officers, I can't recall the guy's name, but his job is to deal with large events.
He's been doing that since long before the Freedom Convoy of 2022.
So some sort of large protest, large sporting event, that's under his purview.
And he said under oath in his testimony that he was specifically directed from higher-ups not to do his job, which in this case was liaising and negotiating with the Freedom Convoy's representatives, in this case, Leach and Barber.
And he said he does not know how high up the food chain that that directive came from.
He speculated it came from the chief of police at the time.
That was a guy named Peter Slowly.
But why would we even delude ourselves into thinking that Peter Slowly had any autonomy?
Jim Watson, the mirror at the time, was out there every day speaking about how this was his top priority.
He's going to deal with it.
He's working with the prime minister.
He's working with other law enforcement authorities, working with Premier Doug Ford.
So again, this went all the way to the top.
And it just proves your point that this is absolutely a Justin Trudeau government directed operation and that nobody had any discretion.
Everyone was waiting to be micromanaged from parliament.
Yeah.
And now this prosecutor is left sort of holding the bag with this impossible case because you can't, what is he to do?
Why Kids Comply00:06:24
Drop the charges now when we said that it was a national public safety crisis because Tamara honked a horn and said, hold the line.
He can't back out of this.
He is on a collision course, I think, with a ruling that is going to embarrass the government at the very least.
But what does he do?
He's in an impossible situation.
Although I would suggest that probably an ethical man would say, I can't bring myself to do this.
He didn't say that.
So here we are.
I'm so glad you said that because this relates to a massive theme that I know you and I, and I bet you the entire audience have observed and continue to observe across what I call the COVID-19 enterprise.
And it's the degree to which people who don't believe in something comply with it for their own reasons.
So we know that police officers very often did not want to do what they were being instructed.
They don't want to arrest some guy for not wearing a mask at Tim Worth.
This is madness, but they do it.
And again, I'm not excusing them.
I'm just explaining what I think the background is.
They're accountable.
At the end of the day, you're accountable, whether you had supposedly good reasons or not.
And I think that applies to the prosecution.
For what it's worth, there's two of them, a man and a woman.
Their hearts don't really seem into it.
And even if they were true believers in their cause, they're still, as you put it, dealing with an impossible situation.
And this whole, again, the COVID-19 enterprise forced people into doing things they don't want to deal with.
It's very much like the emperor has no clothes moment and only the naive, innocent baby had the guts to say that to the emperor.
And everywhere you look, people put on the masks, they don't want to.
They take the injections, they don't want to.
They distance themselves from other people in the grocery stores, they don't want to, but they comply.
And the prosecution, in my view, is no exception.
They don't want to be there.
This actually, these charges got dropped upon them when the former prosecutor who was handling this case got removed for being a little bit too emotive.
I think I recall Ezra Levant explaining.
So they just got this thrown on their desks.
And, you know, they want to get that paycheck.
They want to stay in the good esteem of their management.
So they comply.
Now, I just want to shift lanes here to another thing that you have recently covered in Ottawa.
And again, I think the counter protesters were the poorly behaved ones.
You saw more violence out of the counter protesters than I think we saw out of any of the Freedom Convoy.
And that is the One Million March for Children, where people from all kinds of backgrounds.
Like, I have never seen a more diverse parade of Canadiana than I have seen during these protests.
And really, these protests are about the sexualization.
and gender indoctrination of children, this indoctrination with the mind virus of gender confusion through the education system.
And it is, it's truly people from all backgrounds, new Canadians, old stock Canadians, to use a term that drives the left wild.
Muslims, you know, Hindus, Sikhs, Christians, atheists, new Canadians.
Like I was at the Regina protest and I was like, did the Sikh temple just let out?
What are all these people doing here?
And they were there for the same reasons as everybody else.
But of course, these things tend to be met by madness.
Childless cat ladies, cat moms who don't have their own children are out there telling you that you don't love your children and you don't care about your children if you don't affirm their confusion.
Tell us what your experience was.
Did I just accurately describe your experience at the Ottawa protest?
Go ahead.
I'll add some color to it.
So yeah, it was all sorts of Canadians, like you said, ethnically, racially, nationally, religiously.
I'll go further.
Some were tall, some were thin, some were fat, some were skinny, right?
I mean, literally all kinds.
Canadiana.
And yeah, totally, totally.
And you know what?
It was such a great moment.
So full disclosure, obviously I'm sympathetic towards this movement, this campaign to oppose what I call this transgender slash LGBTQ enterprise.
To me, it's a series of businesses and operations and campaigns, both for financial purposes and also just for ideological indoctrination purposes, as you put it, which is just sickening and evil and wicked and criminal and all the above.
But what was so heartwarming about it is that it was not hard for me to find amazing people.
So if you go watch the video report that I did and also the video reports from my colleagues in different parts of the country who were out there on that Wednesday reporting on, you know, their city's respective million person march for children, it's not like we had to do some hardcore editing.
Oh, yeah, get this guy out, get that person out.
No, everyone was amazing.
It was like you want to get everyone in.
Like I just go up to somebody and, hey, tell me why you're here.
They just make perfect sense.
I go up to another person, hey, what's going on?
What's on your mind?
What are the issues at play?
Amazing, coherent, simple answers.
So the volume of high quality, sensible Canadians, at least with respect to this issue, was amazing.
And it was a Wednesday morning.
So that's only a small fragment.
Right, right.
Right.
So like, how many millions of Canadians are out there that couldn't make it on that Wednesday morning?
So it should be invigorating to those who feel despondent on occasion because we're very atomized in this modern time.
We often feel very isolated by design, by the way the system is, by the way the propaganda of the media is.
And we're thinking, am I the last person that knows two plus two is four?
No, you are not.
You are a part of legions of Canadians who see this for what it is.
And that was really the most amazing part of it.
Yeah, to the part of the counter demonstrators, it's just as you described, a belligerent, incoherent.
They're beyond parody.
They're like caricatures, cat people who don't want to have kids, who want to dictate to you how to have your kids.
It's madness.
Yeah, I call them a bit of a self-fixing problem, which is why they have to proliferate their bad ideas by infecting other people's children with them, because they are the people who say that, you know, you can't have kids because it's dangerous for the climate or whatever.
And so really they are a last generation problem because there's no second generation of these lunatics.
And so that is why they have to go through the education system to infect other people's children with their nonsense.
Feedback Invited00:02:33
Robert, I could talk to you all day.
I have duty calls elsewhere.
But could you please let everybody know where they can find your important work on the Convoy trial?
Well, obviously go to tamaratrial.com where we keep our updates going on.
The trial resumes on October 11th.
So stay tuned for ongoing reports with that.
And of course, you can support us at tamaritrial.com.
And if you feel inclined, you can also support Tamara Leach's defense costs.
And just stay tuned.
You know, there's going to be a lot of great reporting out there.
I'm really thankful for the kind words you shared with me.
It's good to get that sort of feedback from someone who, like, I hold you in high esteem.
So it's good to hear that, you know?
And that's it, guys.
Just stay tuned.
Rebel News, keep going.
I have to tell you, you're doing a great job.
I know how onerous covering a trial is.
You have to be acute to the detail, but also sometimes the minutiae will numb your mind.
And so you've been doing a great job, and I'm really proud of the work that you're doing.
Thank you.
Hey, the bigger the challenge, the bigger the reward.
And I've got a great team.
You guys are really helping me refine my skills.
So it's really a 360 effort.
Well, friends, we've come to the portion of the show where we invite your viewer feedback.
Unlike the mainstream media, and I say this every single week, I actually care about what you think about the work that we do here at Rebel News.
It's why I give out my email address right now.
It's Sheila at RebelNews.com.
If you want me to read it in regards to the show, just put gun show letters in the subject line.
But also don't hesitate to leave a question, comment, story idea, feedback on any of the places where you might watch the show, including the free version on YouTube and Rumble.
Thanks, guys, for sitting through those ads to watch the free version.
Every little bit helps us here at Rebel News.
Now, this one does come from the email mailbag, and it comes to us from Bruce Acheson.
He's a regular viewer from Radway, Alberta.
And we have a bit of a, I do a show, and then he sends me a letter and then I read the letter on air.
It's sort of like this weird pen pal relationship with Bruce and his cat, but he is a loyal watcher and a great supporter of us here at Rebel News.
So I love to talk to Bruce.
But friends, this could be you at home if you just start sending me some letters.
Bruce writes on my show last week with Tom Marazzo from the Freedom Convoy about his new book.
And Tom had touched on some stuff about Putin and the war in Ukraine there.
And Bruce writes, Hi, Sheila.
Trudeau's Warning Woes00:01:08
I do feel worried about Trudeau offending Putin so much that he invades our country.
Of course, if he just took southern Quebec and Ottawa, he'd be doing us a favor.
Very funny.
Very funny.
But seriously, serious dictators are feeling emboldened by Trudeau's idiotic actions.
Canada needs a ton of prayers that this loser will lose his leadership and an election will be forced.
I also had to laugh at an instruction paper for a power transformer under warning.
They thanked customers for buying their product.
Only the Chinese and maybe Trudeau would do such a silly thing.
Your northern neighbor, Bruce Atchison.
You know what?
I think the world is emboldened when Western leaders are weak and apologetic.
Just look at how Iran gets frisky every time a Democrat's in power and China is contaminating Canadian elections right now, interfering, throwing their support behind liberals.
So what does that tell you about Justin Trudeau?
Well, everybody, that's the show for tonight.
Thank you so much for tuning in.
We'll see everybody back here in the same time in the same place next week.