Ezra Levant critiques the July 23 sentencing hearing for Tamara Leach and Chris Barber, convicted of mischief after Ottawa’s peaceful 2022 trucker convoy, where Crown prosecutors—backed by Ontario Premier Doug Ford—demanded seven and eight years despite no violence. He contrasts this with the G20 riots (2010), where protesters received far lighter sentences for property destruction. Lawyer Paul Champ’s civil suit suggests Leach deserves zero jail time, though Levant warns of potential punitive damages. The case highlights judicial overreach, political bias, and a troubling precedent where peaceful dissent faces extreme penalties while violent protests are treated leniently, raising concerns about fairness and the misuse of legal resources. [Automatically generated summary]
Tonight, Rebel News is on location at Tamara Leach's sentencing hearing.
It's July 23rd, and this is the Ezra Levant show.
But like I said, terrorists deserve to go to jail, and I hope they do get a substantial sentence.
We'll see what the judge gives.
And this had nothing to do with freedom, as they call it.
I think it's just that group was kind of like white supremacists.
Shame on you, you censorious bug.
Ezra Levant here outside the Ottawa Courthouse.
It is just after 1 p.m. and the courthouse is now on a lunch break.
Very interesting morning.
We're here, of course, for the sentencing hearing of Chris Barber and Tamara Leach, who were both tried together and convicted together of mischief in regards to their participation in the peaceful trucker convoy in the city three and a half years ago.
The Crown prosecutors, and I say again, they answer to Doug Ford, the provincial conservative premier.
They're not Justin Trudeau's men or Mark Carney's men.
Doug Ford's prosecutors have made an astonishing demand of the judge that she meets out seven years in prison for Tamara Leach and eight for Chris Barber, as well as seizing his semi-truck nickname Big Red, an absolutely incredible demand with no basis in law or precedent.
It's truly revealing.
The mask has slipped.
We see that this is a vendetta, a vengeance prosecution.
So many lawyers and so many cops and so many city officials have been dining out on this prosecution for three and a half years.
Just so many interesting little details.
Let me give you one example.
The Crown prosecution went first and one of the things they were trying to say is how much money the convoy cost the city.
And they claimed that estimates were in the tens of millions of dollars.
Now, how that is on the head of two of the tens of thousands of protesters, I won't know.
But there was this particular moment when a prosecutor was mentioning hotels that were seeking millions of dollars in compensation.
And I thought to myself, hang on, I remember what it was like because I came for the trucker convoy and this city was shut down.
And the judge recognized that, in fact, the Chateau Laurier, the fanciest hotel in the city, they claimed they lost money.
And the judge said, hang on, weren't they shut down because of the lockdowns?
Not because of the convoy, because of the lockdowns.
In fact, wasn't that why they were able to be the hotel for all the cops to stay in?
In fact, the trucker convoy was a windfall for both the hotel and the cops.
Another weird lie from the prosecution.
And I think the big lie of the prosecution was this, that in order to justify their astonishing and authoritarian demands for seven and eight year sentences, they have to argue that this mischief is unlike anything that the court has ever seen, ever, ever, ever.
And so on that basis, the courts should ignore other precedents.
You know, the one thing about our legal system is precedent.
If you only understood one idea, it would be that in Latin, they say stare decisis, stand by the decision.
It's essential to have the rule of law for people to be treated the same way for the same offense.
If you have the same facts and the same charges, you should theoretically receive the same result.
Anything else?
And people don't believe the law is even-handed.
I was in Lethbridge, Alberta, when Justice Keith Yamauchi went through case after case after case, and it became clear before he got to his sentencing what the answer was going to be, zero time in jail, because that's what the precedents are.
The Rule of Law00:03:04
Green Police blocks forestry trucks.
Greenpeace blocks pipelines.
There's so many cases of the environmentalist left blocking in a protest and getting charged with mischief.
And I can't recall a single case where there was a custodial sentence as long as there was no violence.
We heard this morning also from Chris Barber's lawyer, Diane Magus, about another big leftist protest, this one that did turn violent.
You might recall the G20 in Toronto.
I think that was in the year 2010.
It actually went into a full-blown riot and people went there with malice, aforethought.
They went there dressed in what's called the black block style, black head to toe, face obscured to make their identification impossible for police.
There were riots.
Police cars were trashed and smashed.
Oh, by the way, I just want to interrupt myself.
Look what's pulling up over here.
That glorious truck, that rebel billboard truck doing a nice slow drive-by.
I got to interrupt myself because would you look at that magnificent truck?
You know, earlier police came by and told us to move the truck.
The truck itself is used, but the apparatus on the back is, that's what he's doing.
Oh sorry.
You and you, and we are not parking here.
We're driving through, but it is not public problems.
It is.
The Ministry of Attorney General owns the property, and they do not want people driving through.
They don't want people driving through the fire.
Is that what they told you?
Yes.
Well, that car is there.
I know why I just put the plate down, so I'm going to make sure that car is moved as well.
But if you get paid to buy something, they ignore the walking and driving out the city.
I'm going to tell you the street.
Keep you in loops.
Yeah, and I'll be here in case there's any legal we're in the right place if there's any legal problem My name is Ezra Levan.
Hello.
Thanks, my friend.
Yeah, Julie.
So we're doing loops today.
That's just how it is on a public street, in a public place, on a public street.
It's in a public street.
I'll call you right back.
It just is.
And we're just going to keep doing all the peer inside.
Absolutely.
We're going to keep doing that loop again and again and again.
And there's no reason for Ottawa police to make a new issue where there is no problem.
I'm sorry you said any name.
My name is Ezra E. Yep.
Zed.
Yep.
R.A. I note that they have allowed other trucks, including the CBC's truck, to be here with no problem.
The only people getting threats for tickets are the Tamara Leach trucks.
Well, you know what?
It's not my first rodeo.
Protests and Prosecutions00:15:30
Let me get back to my story, though, about the G20 riots in the year 2010.
Diane Magus, who's the lawyer for Chris Barber, went through some of the most astonishing cases.
Riots, robberies, smashing police cars.
The most violent, shocking, terrifying things you could see.
They were faced with mischief charges in the G20 and even what I just described, people dressed head to toe in black to escape detection.
These are people who went in with a riot plan.
17 months sentence, 21 months sentence, and yet this same prosecutor wants an 84 month sentence.
That's what seven years is for Tamara Leach.
Just incredible.
So we heard a lot about that.
Mercifully, it was briefer than I had thought.
I thought we were going to go through one after the other of what are called victim impact statements.
As the term suggests, when there is a crime committed, there is a place for the victim.
Sometimes the victim testifies in a criminal trial, but in the sentencing part, that's when people get to say, well, here's how this crime affected me.
Here's what it's done to my psychology or to my life.
But that's typically for a crime where you actually have a victim, where you were robbed, where you were stabbed, where you were, you know, have PTSD because you were in a store that was smashed by Antipa.
What exactly are the victim impact statements of people in this city, half of which weren't even working during the lockdown?
They were getting paid, but they weren't coming downtown to work.
And it was incredible to hear the discussion between the prosecutor and the judge about people's feelings, about the feelings they felt.
And there were all sorts of uncorroborated gossip, like I saw poop on my lawn, and I ascribe it to the truckers.
Really?
Now, I should say there is a lot of poop in Ottawa, even right around the courthouse here.
There's some rough and tumble types to ascribe that to the truckers who, if anything, were cleaning up the downtown.
I saw them shoveling snow.
I saw them keeping the place immaculate.
That's the quality of evidence.
But imagine living in a country where someone's thin-skinned feelings about a political nature are enough to put you away for seven years.
That's what the prosecution is asking the judge to do.
Anyways, mercifully, the prosecutors ended their case, and Diane Magus, the lawyer for Chris Barber, stood up and started making her case.
And primarily, it was going through the actual case law, you know, the law law, not the feelings law.
We're on a lunch break now.
I imagine that she'll take another hour, maybe two, when we resume.
And then Lawrence Greenspawn, who is the lawyer for Tamara Leach, will probably start today, and then he'll go tomorrow.
They had set aside three full days if necessary, but it's clear to me this will end either tonight or more likely tomorrow before noon, which is a miracle considering how this has been drawn out so much by the prosecution.
You know, I was inside there.
I counted the number of cops in the room and outside, half a dozen.
I counted the government lawyers, four, but then I realized there were others sitting in the pews behind me.
Three defense lawyers for Tamara Leach, one today for Chris Barber, three clerks and a judge.
How many people, oh, and that doesn't even touch on the witnesses.
All the cops who came through, all the city bureaucrats who came through in the months that this thing was in trial.
This trial has been a feast for this government city.
Everyone has gotten rich off this.
And you know what?
It's just the most Ottawa thing I've ever seen.
Just no rush at all.
Who's rushing?
I mean, the taxpayers are paying for the prosecution.
They spent an hour fidgeting with the Zoom because they wanted a couple of journalists to be able to join in by Zoom.
And that took probably half an hour to do.
If you want to see Ottawa at its worst, come in and look at this trial.
And, you know, there was a hubris to it also.
Sort of, how dare these peasants from the Booneies, from the provinces, come to our sacred Ottawa and protest.
I'm not kidding.
The prosecutor at one point tried to distinguish between those cases I mentioned in Alberta at the Lethbridge courthouse between Alberta and Montana where there was a blockade.
The court had heard that there were zero prison terms for two of the men, zero days in custody, and a 30-day term for another one for a particular reason.
And the Crown actually said, well, that's just Coots Alberta.
This is Ottawa.
How dare the peasants come and dirty our town?
Well, actually, that's the whole point of Ottawa.
It's the capital city, and it's owned by the people, not bureaucrats with fat contracts with the government paid for by taxpayers.
There is so much gall.
There is so much hubris in this prosecution, and I'm embarrassed that the judge has allowed it to go on this long.
I do want to mention, and I can't remember if I mentioned it before here, or if I was talking to someone else.
There is a civil suit in this city, a class action against the trucker convoy.
People who say their mental happiness was distraught by it.
Again, like I say, part of Ottawa's purpose is to allow people to come here and protest.
I mean, it's a perpetual thing.
I worked on Parliament Hill 25 years ago or more, and I had a view of the lawn outside Center Block.
Literally every day there were protests.
Sometimes there was two or three protests, one after each other.
This city is where you go to protest and petition your government.
And yes, that includes having some truckers who leave a lane open for emergency vehicles, who work with police to make it as amenable as possible.
The hubris of saying you're not allowed to come to our town, and we're actually going to sue you for $300 million.
Again, they haven't sued any other left-wing protests.
They haven't sued any Hamas protests in this town that are far more abusive.
It's just the trucker freedom protesters that are being sued.
But even the ambulance chasing lawyer for that, his name is Paul Champ, he issued a tweet today saying that the law is plain.
Tamara Leach deserves zero time in jail.
That's simply the precedent.
Now, someone might say he's trying to help Tamara Leach now so he can get punitive damages from her later.
But I think the simple meaning of his tweet is the most important one, which is even the people who hate Tamara Leach, and this city is full of them, even they acknowledge that every legal precedent says she goes free.
In fact, she's already spent 49 days in jail.
And I think there's another thing at play with Paul Champ.
He's a left-wing activist, extremist on the left.
He knows, as I said, that the vast majority of protests in Canada are on the left.
And the vast majority of political violence in this country is on the left.
And if suddenly, because of one hard case, the trucker convoy, there's a new precedent of seven years in prison, well, okay, you'll get Tamara Leach, but you've just set a new precedent that's going to go to all of Paul Champ's friends.
All the Antifa thugs, all the pro-Hamas thugs, all the Greenpeace thugs, all the labor union thugs.
Every wicked activist on the left who knows now that the most they'll get is a slap on the wrist.
If we set a new precedent with Tamara Leach, even people like Paul Champ know that will come back to haunt the left because it's the left that are protesting.
So it'll be interesting to see what happens here.
I actually don't have a lot of confidence in this judge anymore.
I was quite certain she would acquit, but she's actually convicted.
I think that the conviction will be appealed as well as any sentence above zero.
But I'm glad to be here today.
I'm glad to see all the citizen journalists who were here as well.
And there were quite a few mainstream media journalists in there.
Look, this was the number one news story in Canada in 2022.
And Tamara Leach was the number one personality in that number one story.
And since then, the government has been trying to retroactively criminalize it.
They suffered a huge setback when the Federal Court of Canada ruled that, in fact, it was their Emergencies Act that was illegal, not the trucker convoy.
And this prosecution and indeed persecution of Tamara Leach is their attempt to retroactively denormalize the convoy.
That's why it's so important that we fight back and win.
I'll have more later.
Well, I'm mad about this whole thing.
Someone who's a little bit cooler under the collar than me is our friend Mark Joseph, senior litigator at the Democracy Fund.
As you know, the Democracy Fund is crowdfunding Tamara's legal bills.
Mark, what did you think of this morning?
Well, I mean, the Crown made their case that this is an unprecedented event.
The protests were harmful, harmed the community.
And they presented, I think, a number of cases, which they say stands for the proposition that that should result in a severe penalty, custodial penalty of seven or eight years.
And then Diane Magus, counsel for Chris Barber, got up and noted, I think properly, that a lot of those cases don't apply.
Those cases, in particular the G20 cases, involved a lot of violence, a lot of property damage, assaults, thefts, that really distinguished them.
So I think the Crown is on the back foot a little.
They're going to have a difficult time establishing that seven years is an appropriate sentence.
You know, when I saw Paul Champ, the mass, the class action lawyer who's suing Tamara Leach, Chris Barber, and the Truckers, even he, who hates Tamara Leach, tweeted that the precedents show she should get zero jail time.
Why would any lawyer who has an obligation to be temperate and I think lawful, why would they go to such extremes that feel so political to me?
I've covered so many of these cases.
Seven years is so far outside the norm.
How can a lawyer be true to their professional ethical obligations and say, oh yeah, throw her in prison for seven years for something that's really akin to a shoplifting charge?
Well, I mean, the process of the Crown's reasoning is opaque to us, defense lawyers.
So it's just speculation.
But remember, you can take any position you like in court to advance your client's cause, as long as it's not completely absurd.
You know, so the Crown's position, I mean, our view is that it's not backed up by case law, but they're really not bound by anything really outside that.
So, yeah, I mean, they can take whatever position they like.
They just have to justify it in court.
Well, I think it's deeply embarrassing that that represents the government of Ontario.
And that's another thing.
This was a provincial prosecution.
There are some federal prosecutions.
Some of them are for drugs, some for terrorism, I would imagine.
This is Doug Ford all the way.
Look, I don't know where this is coming from.
Again, we don't know what's going on in the Crown's office, but look, the Crown has to make decisions as to where to spend judicial resources.
And they spent 45 days of trial here.
Then we've got another two days of sentencing.
We've had motions in between.
That's a lot of judicial resources.
And I don't have to tell your views as to the state of the affairs in communities across Ontario with respect to crime.
That's just incredible.
Well, thanks for taking some time to chat with me.
I'm mad about this because I just feel like this is a, you know, I used to be a lawyer a long time ago, and I loved being a lawyer.
I looked up to the law.
I thought, well, it's a flawed system, but it's the best system we have.
There's that phrase that I remember learning in law school, bringing the administration of justice into disrepute.
And that was something you never wanted to do.
You didn't want people to laugh at the law or mock the law or hate the law because the law is what we've got to keep us away from barbarism.
And prosecutions like this that are so clearly double standards, I think they bring the administration of justice into disrepute.
You don't have to answer to that.
It's just what I feel.
Well, look, I mean, you want justice to be applied with parity, and you want the sentences to be proportionate.
So I think, you know, Justice Perkins Bay is going to look to those principles, and she's an excellent judge.
She doesn't miss a trick, and she's going to look to the case law, and that's going to be it, I think.
Thanks for talking with him, Mark.
Thanks for having me.
Cheers.
Well, our truck has been driving around Ottawa.
We love to have it here at the courthouse because it irritates all the right people.
But we've taken it around town too, including to a neighborhood that I used to live in way back in the day when I worked at Parliament Hill.
It's called the Byward Market.
It's sort of a cool place.
Young-ish, lots of bars and restaurants.
Some civil servants live there too.
How did they react to the truck?
Alexa, you just got back and you were telling me that it was, let me just say, mixed reactions.
Real mixed reaction.
Some people told me that they perceive the protesters as terrorists.
Some of them say white supremacists.
Oh my God.
And some of them, I say that they should have a harsher sentences, more than 20 years.
Some of them say 20 years or bring back the lifetime penalties, you know, lifetime in jail.
And it was like, okay, but it's only a peaceful protest.
But lots of people over there still believe that it was dangerous to walk downtown Ottawa during that protest.
Can I just ask quickly, what did you think of the Freedom Convoy?
I think it was horrendous, right?
I mean, these were terrorists causing grief to all of the residents of Ottawa.
Frankly, embarrassing Canadians like ourselves, embarrassing Albertans like ourselves.
I wish they never did that.
And I really do hope that they get what they deserve in court.
I think it was ridiculous.
The crown is asking eight EUs.
Do you think they're going to be able to do that?
I think whatever the crowd asks for, the judicial system should be allowed to run.
I think it's absolutely ridiculous when politicians, like Trump is doing in the U.S., right, firing people in the judicial system.
That's unacceptable.
So Polyev and his, some of the, well, Polyev, first of all, not even as an MP right now, making comments that are contrary to what the judicial system is trying to do, completely inappropriate.
Politicians Above the Law?00:02:54
We don't need politicians.
They shouldn't be above the law.
They shouldn't have any jurisdiction over the law.
And you have to let the crown prosecutors do their job.
They're the experts in this.
But like I said, terrorists deserve to go to jail.
And I hope they do get a substantial sentence.
We'll see what the judge gives.
Well, that shows you the power of propaganda.
You and I were both here in this city, and it felt so safe because there were so many people.
You know, it felt like they took, I would not want to walk around Ottawa at night today.
I just wouldn't.
It would be too dangerous.
But to walk around during the convoy felt extremely safe because everyone was everywhere and I know that crime fell in the downtown.
So I think that's the power of propaganda.
People who were lied to or their friends made up stories or gossip.
I think that's what's going on there.
Let's throw to some of your clips.
I know you're going to take some time to edit them a bit, but you've already put some clips up.
Let's take a quick look.
I'll ask you quickly, like, what did you think about the Freedom Convoy 2022?
The Freedom Convoy.
Yeah, what did you think of it?
It was kind of late in the day to be asked.
I know, I know.
It was a problem.
Yeah, I live around here.
It was a problem.
I had a lot of threats from people yelling at me for wearing a mask, people coming over in front of my house, ringing bells, yelling, freedom, freedom, freedom, interfering with conversations with neighbors.
Because I live across from where they were staying.
So it was intrusive and it was unnecessary.
I don't think they accomplished anything.
I think they were more of a laughing stock at the end.
I think they've shown themselves for what they are.
Also, I think the people who are the leaders were not just leaders of that group.
I think initially they were anti-immigration.
They were gun lobbyists.
They belong to a different group than the one they portrayed themselves as being part of here.
And they hid behind the Freedom Convoy, I think, in order to pass on their views about, well, they're racists.
And nobody brought that up as much, but there was a lot of racism going on up there near Parliament.
And people of color were being harassed and called names.
And this had nothing to do with freedom, as they call it.
I think it's just that group was kind of like white supremacists.
Well, Alexa, thanks for making the journey here.
Crowdfunding for Legal Defense00:03:21
I feel that Rebel News has supported Tamara Leach as one of our biggest causes, whether it was crowdfunding with the Democracy Fund for her legal defense or publishing her book or helping her with her expenses.
And it's one of the things I'm proudest about.
And I remember when we met you during the lockdowns.
That's when you joined Rebel News and you've gone on to great things.
So thank you for being part of the effort.
I think it's important.
I think we are doing a great job at Rebel.
Well, I'm glad we're here and we're going to follow this to the end.
We have already told Tamara that we will crowdfund any legal appeals she needs.
It's the least we can do.
For Rebel News, I'm Ezra Levant, outside the Ottawa Courthouse.
Well, we've heard that the trial will continue after lunch and probably tomorrow morning, but it will not go on to Friday as we originally feared.
I'm talking about the sentencing hearing.
So we will not have a result today or even tomorrow.
What will likely happen is this judge will take some days or even weeks to review the submissions and she'll probably convene the lawyers back in the courthouse to finally announce the result of the sentencing hearing.
Just insane demands on the part of the government, discrediting demands, I think.
We'll keep you posted how it goes.
I'm going to be back tomorrow live tweeting the proceedings.
Our truck is going to continue circulating.
Alexa is going to go attend with the truck to see what people have to say.
And as I mentioned a moment ago, we have pledged to continue supporting Tamara to the very end.
And hopefully the very end will result in an appeal that overturns her conviction.
And if there's even a day of sentencing, that overturns that too.
That's our show for today.
Until tomorrow, on behalf of all of us at Rebel, around the world, to you at home, good night, and keep fighting for freedom.
Was just talking to Tamara Leach.
As you know, tomorrow, she's back in court in Ottawa facing sentencing for her role in the trucker convoys.
You know, Rebel News has supported her all the way.
We published her book.
We've helped crowdfund.
I talked to her about her security.
Remember, she's been paying her security herself.
We've covered the bill so far.
And I said, Tamara, do you have security?
Because there are so many crazies outside that Ottawa courthouse.
She has needed it before.
She said she was having some trouble finding security.
Rebel News, as you know, has connections with security because we always need it for our reporters.
So we've lined up security for her.
And I've also offered to pay her travel costs.
Remember, she's coming back and forth from Alberta at her own expense, hotel, gas, et cetera.
I said, there's no way you should bear that burden.
Let me try to crowdfund that.
We'll take care of the security and we'll take care of your hotel and your travel.
If you want to help me protect Tamara Leach as she comes and goes in Ottawa, and I know that sounds sort of extreme, but the kooks who are around the courthouse there are actually one of them was just convicted, Deanna Sharif.
Help me protect Tamara.
Go to protecttamara.com.
We have already arranged her security, so she'll be good.