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Are the Freedom Convoy leaders guilty?

I intentionally avoided any specific penalty in the title because I don't really care what the punishment is. It could be a slap on the wrist for all I care. As to whether I not I *think* that they should be found guilty of something however, the answer is; yes.

Now, I'm not sure if what I'm about to describe actually describes anything criminal or not. I'm simply making a case for why I think that their behavior, constitutes something which I think should be illegal.

The short version is this; whether or not they were encouraging lawlessness, they were facilitating it. And they continued to do so, even after it would have become obvious that this was the case.

Calling for your supporters to "protest peacefully" or to continue to "protest peacefully" are all fine and good. But, once it becomes apparent that:

  1. A faction of people are not protesting peacefully AND
  2. Your calls to protest peacefully are being ignored/are ineffective AND
  3. It is clear that your calls to remain protesting are making it harder for law enforcement to remove criminal elements
Then at that point you are, in my opinion, knowingly an accessory to that criminal element.

I would say that this behavior is analogous to driving a bank robber to the bank, knowing full well that they intend and have the means to rob the bank, simply because it was on your way to work. It is legal to drive. It is legal to go to work. It is legal to give someone else a lift. But it is still a crime to intentionally assist someone in perpetrating a crime, even if the exact actions are otherwise no different from ones which are legal. 

As stated, I'm no pro at Canadian law. So I'm not sure if that actually IS illegal here or if there are other legal thresholds which might need to be met.

I want to clear up a couple of things for those who may not be fully aware of the situation:
  • The freedom convoy occupied downtown Ottawa for more than 3 full weeks
  • The occupation in and of itself was not inherently lawful
  • In addition to that, there were more overt acts of lawlessness which started on the first weekend
  • Complaints were made of many federal, provincial and municipal violations from the very beginning
  • What made enforcement so difficult was the scale of the occupation and the mix of both law abiding and criminal elements
I have no evidence, but I honestly believe 2 concurrent things as well:
  1. Lich and Barber were not directly in control of most of the criminal element
  2. That was an intended "feature" of the protests
Given that everyone already knew about the mask and vaccine mandates and the country had just wrapped up an election which almost solely revolved around that very topic, this did not make sense as a protest to raise awareness of anything or as a protest to make their expectations known. In fact, the government had at all levels already acknowledged their presence publicly. 

To my mind, the only reasonable reason for the protests (especially continuing them after the first weekend of full week) was in the hopes that it would turn criminal IN SPITE of calls to remain peaceful. This would allow the organizers to maintain an air of legitimacy while using the criminal element as leverage. 

Nevertheless, in my opinion, any reasonable person would have known well before the emergencies act was invoked that there was a criminal element which needed the legitimacy of the freedom convoy to operate. Other, similar protests had peaceably disbanded when things got out of hand, and over a MUCH smaller timeframe. To me, there are only 2 possible motivations when there is clear criminal activity taking over the meaning and message of your protests;
  • The existence of the criminal element is not an unintended/undesired consequence
  • It was more about the money from crowd funding
Given that assets were frozen... I'm not sure how profitable it was toward the end. So whether it was organized or unexpected, I have to assume that at some point the organizers realized that the crime could be beneficial to their cause and disregarded their own complicity in the process.

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