Ezra Levant covers the Coutts Three trial—Marco Van Hugenboss, Alex Van Herc (Southern Alberta entrepreneur), and George Jansen—charged in a 2023 pre-trial hearing for their role in the 2021 Coutts border blockade, which lasted weeks amid -35°C winters. The case mirrors Tamara Leach’s politically motivated prosecution, with parallels like undercover police and prosecutor Stephen Johnson’s aggressive stance. Defendants argue the peaceful protest pressured Jason Kenney to drop illegal vaccine mandates, sparking broader political shifts. Levant frames it as a civil liberties fight, urging donations at CootS3.com while vowing factual reporting despite personal alignment with their cause. [Automatically generated summary]
I'm in Lethbridge, Alberta, covering the trial of the so-called Coots 3.
That's the leadership group, according to the prosecutors, behind the blockade in Coots, Alberta, two years ago.
But before we get to that, let me invite you to become a subscriber to Rebel News Plus.
That's the video version of this podcast.
Just go to RebelNewsPlus.com, click subscribe.
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All right, here's today's show.
Tonight, the leaders of the Coutts border blockade are in court.
I'll have all the details.
It's February 26th, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
Shame on you, you sensorious bug.
Morning, everybody.
Ezra Levant here for Rebel News.
As you can see, I am back in Lethbridge, my home away from home.
I think I've been to this town maybe 20 times since the pandemic, all for the same reason.
This is the courthouse that is handling all the charges emanating from protests, including the very momentous blockade at the border between Coots, Alberta, and Sweetgrass, Montana.
Dozens of charges emanated from that.
Most of them were minor offenses, but some were more serious.
We're here today because there's a pre-trial hearing in a case that really reminds me of that of Tamara Leach in Ottawa.
It's the so-called leadership group of the blockade at the Coots border almost two years ago, exactly, and it's really snowy and cold today, which is how it was at the blockade two years ago.
The three men who were being prosecuted are Marco Van Hugenboss, who actually at the time was a local town councillor, and two other men, Alex Van Herc and George Janssen.
They were part of the Truckers Council that was sort of like an ad hoc democratic governance of these truckers in the blockade.
They've been charged by police with various mischief-like offenses.
And Rebel News is doing two things.
We are covering their trial.
And I'll introduce to you the gentleman next to me in a second.
And importantly, we're also crowdfunding their legal defense.
Each of the men has their own lawyer.
So there are three lawyers that we are crowdfunding.
I'm delighted to say that because this is a civil liberties case, our crowdfunding funds go through the Democracy Fund, which issues a charitable tax receipt.
So if you want to make a donation, you can do so at Coutes3.com.
At that same website, you can help us cover our journalistic costs, which are completely separate.
And which brings me to the two journalists standing next to me, Robert Krachuk, who's come in from Ottawa, and Sidney Fizard, who has come down from Calgary.
Let's start with Sid.
Nice to see you.
Sid, you were there embedded in the blockade pretty much the whole time.
Why don't you recap for our viewers what you saw and heard and experienced in real time at the blockade?
Well, absolutely.
I was there for 16 days in total.
It was 18.
We arrived on the third day roughly.
And from there, obviously, it was a peaceful protest, as many people know, much like the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa.
That persisted, and there was quite literally nothing the RCMP could do to end demonstrations.
Likewise, political messaging, especially from the former premier, to end all vaccine mandates, was expected to be a big win for them.
But that didn't work either.
So Political Avenue failed, the Enforcement Avenue failed.
And then eventually the blockade did end peacefully to prove that message loud and clear.
And in September, months after the blockade, there were three individuals who Alex, Marco, and George alleged to be key participants of the blockade facing mischief charges over 5,000 now.
Well, I'm so glad you went down then.
I remember when you and Kian Simoni went down, we thought it would be like a day trip or two, but you guys wound up staying, as you said, for more than two weeks.
It was bitter cold.
Tell us a little bit more about what it was like on the ground.
Coots is a tiny town.
It's not even a town.
I think it's a village.
There's a saloon.
There's some border crossing buildings.
It really is a small place.
And I think that's one reason the men were able to hold out for so long.
In Windsor, Ontario, in Ottawa, Ontario, there's massive police presence very close by.
There's a lot of tow trucks.
There's a lot of machinery.
Coots is miles away from really anything.
And I don't think the police or other officials could muster the sheer physical power to push the guys out.
What was it like when you were there at the saloon?
Well, that's absolutely it.
It was a barren wasteland.
Not to say it was a wasteland.
I respect the town of Coots.
It's a very lovely place.
But it was absolutely empty.
And one of the key things I think here is that what a lot of people don't realize is the RCMP barrier that was set up around the Coots blockade nearer to the town of Milk River, where we saw thousands of people come to show their support.
They were being stopped there from going into the blockade.
But likewise, those people who were there since day one, who were the blockade, as it were, and their supporters, if they were to leave with their vehicles, there would be no going back to the Coutts blockade.
So after 16 days, these guys had been there the whole time because they weren't allowed to leave and come back.
And likewise to the conditions today, it was negative 35 worse with horrible winter conditions and wind that was coming across.
And one of the big requests early on was simply to get food and fuel and other such essentials to the blockaders because police were blocking everything off.
And now, after 16 days, we see that these alleged key participants may have just been the most vocal in the bunch that were trapped there, as opposed to being, you know, the supreme underlord organizers of such a gang.
Very interesting.
So it's almost like the police had a siege wall around the whole place.
Not very close to it, but I remember Milk River.
I remember the efforts that some of the protesters made to bring food down there because you have all these men.
It's not a custom.
Now, I want to switch gears for a second.
Robert, you've just arrived in Lethbridge last night.
I think your greatest contribution to Rebel News so far has been your daily intensive coverage of the trial of Tamara Leach and Chris Barber.
Tamara Leach, very famous for being, I call her sort of the spiritual leader of the Ottawa convoy.
Very mild-mannered, soft-spoken.
She was thrown in prison for 49 days before her hearing.
She was treated very abusively, in my mind, by the government.
Very political trial.
The trial has been stretched on, the process and the punishment.
My theory, Robert, is that what you see here in Lethbridge will draw upon the lessons you've learned in your coverage of Tamara Leach.
That's my theory.
What do you think?
Well, to be determined, as I observe events as they unfold beginning today and across this week and several weeks in April, we'll see whether or not that commonality, that common thread is accurate.
I suspect that it will be.
And given what Sid was just saying about the role of the defendants that will be appearing today, they were the sort of leaders, the most vocal, I think is the way you described them, relative to those who were attending this blockade in Coutz.
And that applies, of course, in the parallel sense to what we saw from Tamara Leach and Chris Barber in that they were both, to use your term for Tamara Leach, spiritual leaders.
They were organizational heads of this freedom convoy, which of course could not be tolerated by the authorities given their political investment in what I call the COVID-19 enterprise.
So if that's true, then we'll see that these men are being targeted with these charges, including mischief and some other lower-level charges, because of their prominent roles in order to send a message.
But that will be determined as events unfold.
Now, tell me a little bit about the routine you got into in Ottawa covering the trial.
I attended for one day and my eyes glazed over because they were bringing witnesses that didn't know anything about Tamara Leach, never met her, never talked to her.
It was clear they were just to talk out the clock and just to a fog machine.
I'm not sure how it'll go here.
Like you say, to be determined.
I mean, one of our mottos at Rebel News is follow the facts wherever they lead.
Are there any things that really left an imprint on you from covering the Tamara Leach trial about prosecutorial zeal, about political motivations of prosecutions?
Because I have to say, I think that if there wasn't politics behind the Tamara Leach case, I think I don't know if that case would have ever gone to court at all.
And if it did, it would have been a half-day trial and would have been over.
I really think we're seeing the politicization of prosecutions.
That's something we normally associate with the Banana Republic.
Okay, I agree with your assessment.
I wasn't paying close attention at the time that the previous prosecutor for the Tamara Leach and Chris Barber trial was there.
His name was, what, Karen Jeet, remind me?
Moise Karimji.
And he was a senior Liberal Party donor.
He was so vengeful and emotional.
Thankfully, the government replaced him as a prosecutor just a few months before trial, which is such a rare thing, I got to tell you.
They worked on that Tamara Leach investigation and prosecution for more than a year.
And then they dropped the lead prosecutor before trial because he was obviously out of control.
I think there's something similar going on here.
There's a prosecutor named Stephen Johnson who's going after pretty much anyone who did anything in Coups.
He was the prosecutor who went after Pastor Arthur Pavlovsky.
I get the same vibes from him.
He's angry.
He's thin-skinned.
This has become, you know, it's like he's searching for Moby Dick or something.
This is a quest for him.
I don't think that's how prosecutors ought to be.
And I don't think Danielle Smith wants to meddle in prosecutions, and she probably shouldn't.
But boy, it feels like it's a personal mission rather than a public mission.
So I'll share a broad observation, and then I'll go into some specifics about your original question on the day-to-day.
I think in general, there's a lot of politicization of the so-called justice systems, not just in Canada, but the United States and the broader Anglosphere.
And as you were describing the previous prosecutor in the Tamara Leach and Chris Barber trial, it's not just a vendetta in my view.
Again, I'm engaging in some mind reading here, but they view it as a political opportunity to develop themselves, to create brands for themselves that they can then sort of monetize for greater political gain.
You see this in the U.S. with respect to Donald Trump and a bunch of other cases.
Now, in terms of the day-to-day occurrences and what I've observed in terms of political aspects or the nature of the process that you found unbearable, by the way, I've got a thick skin so I can endure that sort of tediousness.
The prosecutors that replaced the previous prosecutor themselves were much more measured.
So if the government's intent was to diminish the likelihood of them appearing overzealous and over-aggressive and personality-driven and political, then they did that in terms of demeanor and style because Siobhan Westcher and Tim Radcliffe, the two prosecutors in the Tamara Leach and Chris Barber trial, again, are very well put together and professional in their demeanor.
Now, but what about the specifics?
The nature of the evidence was very much absurd.
You had a bunch of witnesses, okay, auto residents, who were invited to testify about the harms they claim to have suffered as a function of the Freedom Convoy demonstration in Ottawa, and none of these people had even encountered Chris Barberts and Merleech.
That's quite crazy.
They cannot provide specific evidence or observations or anecdotes about the very two people as defendants.
They were going through a therapy session, not a prosecution of two individuals whose liberty was hanging on the line.
Injunctions and Testimonies00:09:43
Yeah, absolutely.
And even one of the protesters, sorry, not the protesters, one of the witnesses, what was her name again, Zen Shi Lee, she was like a sort of professional protester.
She had gained notoriety among us, those of us, let's say, in the freedom movement, if I can use that term, but she had developed a reputation for herself on the left, if I'll call them that, as being this professional victim and whining about supposedly being threatened and harmed, no evidence provided.
And then she was elevated in some other ways as far as her initiation of this lawsuit, which brought upon this, what was the term?
Was it sort of a judgment, a sort of prohibition against honking in Ottawa?
I think they call that an injunction.
Now, I got to say, and I was in Ottawa for a few days for the trucker convoy.
The honking was loud.
And I actually think that the judge who said, look, no honking in the residential areas, I can't say I'm mad at him.
I mean, honking is a way of expressing yourself, but I think it did lower the temperature.
And there were some people who couldn't sleep.
I think that that was exaggerated.
That was the worst thing the truckers did.
They got some parking tickets and they honked their horns.
And then they had a bouncy castle and the hot tubs.
I sort of love the fact that the horn honking was the worst they did.
In fact, they really didn't get out of their trucks.
They didn't go into any building like the January Sixers did.
And the fact that horn honking was the worst they could say about him shows how peaceful it was.
And I think that was the trait of the blockade at Coots.
It was peaceful.
And Rebel News sent down a tag team of lawyers, Chad Williamson and his colleagues.
They sort of rotated through the blockade at Coots, talking to the men one-on-one, telling them their rights, giving them suggestions and warnings.
Don't bring firearms was something they said every day.
And I think that the lawyers we sent helped lower the temperature there.
And we'll see what happens in court.
Now, Sid, since you knew the men even before these charges were contemplated, you went down there, you were embedded in the protesters.
We've already published one documentary that people can see at RebelNewsPlus.com about the Coots blockade.
We've published several documentaries about the convoy movement.
You're working on a biographical piece.
Just give us a little bit of a heads up of, I mean, these three men, Marco, Alex, and George, I don't know them very well.
I've met them a couple of times.
You spent some time with them.
What story are you going to tell in your biographical piece that you're working on?
Well, in preparations for their trial, I had sat down and done a long form interview with Alex Van Herc, Markov Van Hugenboss, and George Jansen, the three accused of mischief here.
So this is to give people a bit of perspective on who they are.
It'll be three reports, you know, to individualize them, because oftentimes in these stories, people get clustered together.
But George was a person.
He's a real estate agent.
He lives in small town Alberta.
He's got a bunch of kids.
He loves his family, and that's what he does every day.
He works for his family.
And he got caught up in the Coutz blockade demonstrations like thousands of people across Alberta, to say the least.
And he was one of the individuals who was quite literally stuck there.
If he were to have left, then it was game over for him in protesting.
So he stayed.
And now he's being punished because perhaps, as he mentioned, 75% of the people that went down there roughly were truckers, at least in the beginning.
He's a real estate agent.
He talks to people every day.
He sells houses.
I'm sure he's going to be a much better communicator than a bunch of truckers who, not disrespectfully, but they'll spend most of their time isolated.
Whereas you've got a real estate agent, you've got a Fort McLeod town counselor, another person who's going to be good at communicating, and then Alex Van Hurk.
He just seems like a great Southern Albertan entrepreneur.
And it seems largely like they are being targeted because of just simply being upright people.
And that's hopefully what we'll dispel here is that they weren't some violent criminal organization.
It was simply a bunch of guys who showed up at the border, a save organization.
It was very grassroots.
Yeah, and the very fact that the prosecutor, I heard him last week, describe these three men as the leadership group, suggests that the leadership is what they did wrong, not a crime.
Their crime was leading a political protest, the most effective peaceful political protest.
We should remember that these two protests, the Ottawa convoy and the Coutz blockade, I think were the most effective political protests in modern Canadian times.
In the case of the Coots blockade, I think it is directly responsible for Jason Kenney dropping his mandates and, frankly, a few months later, being booted out of his party.
And in Ottawa, if you look at the polling, that's when Justin Trudeau started to trend down.
Because when he brought in the Emergencies Act in an unforced error, it showed his authoritarian nature.
It showed that his happy days, sunny ways, was just a facade.
And by the way, it also got rid of Aaron O'Toole as the leader of the Conservative Party and installed, through a democratic process, a more conservative, conservative leader.
I think those are two enormous changes.
And that last one, we have yet to see the fruits of it.
I think it might have actually spelled the doom for Justin Trudeau.
So I think that when the prosecutor calls them the leadership group, it's their leadership he hates, not the crime of hanging out in a saloon.
And maybe if I can just add one point to that, it really was probably the most democratic thing I've ever seen at the Coots blockade because out of the 50, 60 or so truckers, they all came in to have a meeting about every decision.
And it wasn't necessarily that Alex, Marco, and George were deciding what's on the roster.
No, everyone was deciding what's going to happen here.
They were simply the guys who understood what everyone was agreeing to.
Yeah, and you know, it's interesting because we've learned from the other cases that there were undercover cops in there.
There were uniformed cops in there.
There was all sorts of, you know, it was all sorts of people, some of whom knew each other in advance, some of whom didn't.
Some were interlopers just looking for some excitement.
Some were rooted in the community.
We're going to learn a lot more about it.
Well, listen, I'm so glad you guys are here.
Sid, you were there literally before it, right when it started.
And you and Kean actually signaled to us at Rebel World Headquarters, we need some help here.
And that's when we crowdfunded the lawyers to go embed in the blockade.
And to this day, the lawyers have been defending the men.
Robert, this is your first trip to Lethbridge, am I right?
Yeah, first time here.
And I haven't been to Alberta since I was a kid with my parents on a road trip to like Banff and Jasper.
So yeah.
I'm sorry it's so cold to welcome you out here, but I think you'll find the people warm.
All right, so that's our sort of our scene center.
We've got a few days of pre-trial hearings.
We have to be very careful that we follow the publication bans.
And there's good reasons for publication bans.
It's because you don't want untested evidence to be circulating in the community.
If there's going to be a jury, you don't want them to be tainted by that.
So we want to follow those rules.
All three of us, I know Sidney and I are accredited with the Alberta Court of King's Bench, and I know that you're registering as official media also.
One of the things you have to do is promise to keep publication bans, and we absolutely will because we want to follow the rules and we don't want to jeopardize the trial.
So that may limit some of the things you can report.
Because we're friends with the lawyers and friends with the men, we can talk to them about the case.
But again, we want to be careful.
We don't want to interview the three men in a manner that would get them to say anything that would be harmful to their case.
And I think they're big boys and they know that also.
So I think we would keep our conversations with them fairly general.
And, you know, there's going to be the three lawyers for the men that we can talk to.
Know that in Ottawa you really got into a good rapport with Lawrence Greenspawn, the lead lawyer for Tamara Leach, and I thought that was very helpful for your journalism.
So there you have it.
That's our scene center.
It is so cold.
I'm losing feeling in my fingers.
We're going to go in.
The hearing starts at 10.
We'll be in there a little bit early to make sure we get seats because they're having this tiny courtroom.
Alex Van Hurck told me the other day his family alone would fill up that courtroom.
So I don't know why they're having it in such a tiny courtroom.
A conspiracy theorist might say they don't want a large public presence.
Guys, I'm counting on you to do great journalism here.
This is a story that Rebel News has owned from the beginning, not just as observers, but as people who stepped in to fix the problem.
I truly believe in my bones that had we not sent lawyers into the blockade, bad things would have happened.
I believe our lawyers helped lower the temperature, let the men know their rights, and act as sort of a lubricant between them and the cops.
I also think that our journalism here is going to be very factual.
We're sympathetic to the men, obviously.
We're helping them, but we're also going to follow the facts wherever they lead and we're going to recall it like we see it.
And finally, I'd like to say to our viewers, if you want to help pay for the defense of these three men, you can do so at coots3.com.
There's two different buttons on that page.
One is to chip in to the lawyers who are defending the three men.
The other is to chip in to our economy class accommodation here in Lethbridge.
Robert flew in all the way from Ottawa.
He's staying in the economy Wyndham Suites.
Is that right?
It's like about $100 a night or something.
Someway, either way, the point is it's not free.
It's not free, but it is modest.
I mean, listen, there's Lethbridge.
There's no five-star hotels here.
It's not a luxury town.
We're here to work.
If you can help us cover the costs of our excellent journalistic team, please do.
If you want to help cover the costs of the lawyers, please do.
You can do all of that at coots3.com.
Thanks for your support.
We're going to go in now.
Well, that's the video we recorded this morning.
Here's a video that my colleague Robert Krajik did with two of the defendants, Alex Van Herk and Marco Van Hugenboss.
Supporters Arrive00:05:38
So I'm here with Alex.
I'm also here with Marco to the defendants whose proceedings began today.
Just want to let you guys know out the gate that there is a publication ban issued by the judge, so we cannot discuss the proceedings of today.
And that publication ban is put in place in order to prevent any tainting of the jury.
In other words, if we were to speak about proceedings today publicly and people who would end up on the jury ended up seeing it, it may prejudice their thoughts going in.
So, gentlemen, you've been waiting tears for this day.
Why don't you tell me what's going on, what's on your mind, difficulties with the families, these sorts of things, and what it feels like to be here today.
Well, I'm definitely thankful that we're here and that we're finally moving forward with this prosecution.
These charges have been laid since September of 2022, and it's been a long time coming.
And even though, you know, the future is uncertainty with a charge this serious and the possible ramifications of that charge.
And to some degree, life has been put on hold for myself, for my family.
And you get used to the constant overbearing pressure of this all.
But I'm really thankful that finally we're here in court to address some of these pre-trial applications.
Without speaking to what happened in court, I feel that my defense did a phenomenal job in presenting themselves.
And I, for the first time, was able to experience the justice that has been appointed to our prosecution.
And so far, I think things have gone very fair and very orderly.
And that's a good start.
That is ultimately what we're looking for here, is that justice be done and that it's not us having to remove our guilt, but that our, that we are here able to for them, that that they have to challenge our our, our guilt, and not that we have to prove our innocence.
So Alex, same question for you.
Yeah, like I say, I'm thankful for the supporters that came in this morning to support us.
We really appreciate that.
Like I say, we got both, got all got big families.
Yeah, there again our, our defense did a great job of articulating what we're, you know what we're after here and without like say, getting into the detail, I felt they did a good fight of trying to articulate what we want and what we'd like the jury to be able to do to get a fair and honest jury, and what their abilities could be.
So yes no, I appreciate, you know, Rebel NEWS supporting us and and being here for us and, like I say, I hope that people keep remembering why we stood there, why we stood on that line for 18 days and, you know, stand by us with being here in court.
Okay, you're getting ahead of me with my last question, because I know it's freezing outside.
We all want to go for lunch.
So Alex, on that point, in terms of why you were here, why you were demonstrating over at that Coots border crossing between Alberta and Montana, the US and Canada, tell us.
What was that about?
What was the motivation behind that?
What was the purpose of that?
What incited you guys to go and do that protest?
Well, it was the mandates that were being imposed upon the truckers and all Canadians it was.
It was, they were illegal, there was.
You can see, now as after this happened, of all these mandates that were being imposed, that if we went to stood up, do you think how many lives would have been lost?
More so thankfully, you know what the mandates were lifted and changed and how many people weren't, you know, got to see and were had to stop of getting the jab and being able to go cross the line and drive truck again.
So I feel we saved a lot of people's lives and and we changed, I think, history from what was happening in our tyrannical government.
We were living in a tyranny at that time.
Marco Marco, you want to add to that?
Yeah, I'm not, not to repeat anything my friend here mentioned and when I say friend, he actually is my friend and not the way they usually use the word friend in the courts.
This kind of makes my stomach turn at times.
But, to be honest, the convictions we had while we were there are, are still there and if anything they those convictions have been been, they've been become mainstream in the public.
You know, we see the Ingram decision, we see that in Alberta the mandates and the health measures that were passed down and approved by the politicians are now deemed to be illegal.
They did not have the authority to do that.
So while we are here in front of the courts where they're looking to prosecute us for those 18 days on the border, I say to, I say to the public and I say to them, what about the prosecution of those who forced blue-collar and white-collar law-abiding individuals to to behave in such drastic measures?
Where is the accountability for those who were elected to represent us?
And that, to me, is is is the big fight and unfortunately That is a focus that mainstream media doesn't want to, or legacy media doesn't want to focus on, but that has to be the question moving forward.
While we can prosecute all of those who may have behaved in a manner that isn't approved by society during an event that was tyrannical, like my friend mentioned.
And a preamble of our Charter of Rights in our human rights is actually, it says, whereas it is essential if man is not to be compelled to have recourse as a last resort to rebellion against tyranny and oppression, that human rights should be protected by the rule of law.
Robert Covers Coots 3 Trial00:00:49
Where is the accountability and where is when will those in positions of responsibility hold those who were in positions of responsibility to account?
Well, that's a bit of the flavor of today, but I'm frustrating that I can't give you more details.
That's because it's under a strict publication ban.
The reason for that is they don't want to compromise the jury.
And fair enough.
But Robert will be here covering the totality of the trial of the Coots 3.
Unlike the Coots 4 or the Coots 5, there's a bunch of different similar trials, but the Coots 3 are what the prosecutors called the leadership group.
Not only will we be doing our journalism, but in fact, through the Democracy Fund, we are crowdfunding the lawyers for these three men.
To learn more, go to Coots3.com.
Well, that's our show for today from Frosty Lethbridge.
I'm going to head on back to our world headquarters tonight.