A trial is currently underway in Canada, and the rights of every Canadian citizen are at stake. Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert are facing farcical charges stemming from their participation in a peaceful protest against Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s COVID-19 response.

Their assumed guilt is tied up with Trudeau’s larger effort to legitimize the use of the Emergencies Act against peaceful protestors; an inquest into Trudeau’s suspension of civil rights surrounding the Freedom Convoy hinges on a conviction in the case of the Coutts Four. Needless to say, Trudeau and his supporters are anxious to win the case. Complicating this effort is the fact that two of the four men were released from prison and had all the original charges against them dropped.

In the meantime, Olienick and Carbert have been kept in a form of carceral purgatory called “remand” since being arrested for exercising their once-protected rights to protest. In this purgatory, where they do not have the normal rights afforded convicted felons, they have been denied access to necessary medical care, among other indignities, and Olienick had spent over 90 days in solitary confinement, which is considered torture in most civilized societies.

Canada has imported from the U.S. a novel and uniquely American strategy by which elites deal with democratic ideas and groups they don’t like—namely, the use of lawfare.

https://www.newsweek.com/lawfare-comes-canada-coutts-four-get-their-day-court-opinion-1913946