Lawyers representing Tamara Lich, Chris Barber and their fellow Freedom Convoy organizers will appear in court Thursday to argue the $290 million lawsuit against them be dismissed. Defending parties will present an oral argument in the Ontario Superior Court of Justice to argue the lawsuit is “merely intended to punish the defendants for participating in the 2022 Freedom Convoy protest.”If the lawyers are successful, the class action lawsuit will be altogether dismissed. Lich and Barber face charges of mischief, intimidation, obstruction, and counselling to commit the same crimes not committed from the time of the convoy, which was organized to protest the Justin Trudeau Liberal government’s COVID-19 mandates. .The convoy organizers’ defence team says the multi-million dollar class action was “designed to silence their expression,” according to the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms (JCCF) in a news release published Tuesday. “Expression the public had an interest in hearing.”“The fundamental Charter Freedoms of expression, association and peaceful assembly must be vigorously protected and defended, whether they are attacked directly by government or indirectly through a misguided civil action,” JCCF president John Carpay said.Defence counsels have therefore filed an application to dismiss the class action lawsuit altogether, arguing it is a Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation (SLAPP), which is a lawsuit filed with the intent to quash freedom of expression for people who protest the government peacefully. JCCF cites anti-SLAPP legislation, which is designed to protect Canadians from such “strategic” lawsuits constructed to silence freedom of expression, and is “designed to end such lawsuits.”Once the defendant files an anti-SLAPP motion, their lawyers must prove the charges against them “relates to a matter of public interest.”If defence lawyers are successful, “the plaintiff must then demonstrate that their lawsuit has ‘substantial merit’ and that the defendant has no valid defence.” Finally the judge weighs “the importance of the expression at stake against the importance of the plaintiff’s allegations of harm,” JCCF explained. Defence lawyers assert alleged offences against Lich, Barber, and other organizers “arise from their expression,” and say this is a matter of public interest because of all the people who donated to crowdfunding the convoy. “Donating to and participating in the Freedom Convoy amounted to an expression of support for the protest and of disagreement with the Government of Canada’s response to COVID–matters of public interest,” JCCF wrote, noting the “factual and legal weaknesses in the lawsuit. “It is not obvious that the proceeding against the defendants has ‘substantial merit,’” JCCF said. “Lawyers argue that the defendants do have valid defences and that the value of the expression at issue outweighs the allegations of nuisance against them.”The class action lawsuit was filed by point person Zexi Li, a 23-year-old government employee born in China, at the time of the Freedom Convoy in Ottawa in February 2022. “Zexi Li’s lawsuit engages the very purpose that ‘anti-SLAPP’ legislation was designed to address: an attempt to silence peaceful expression, and the right of defendants to participate in public debate,” lawyer James Manson said. Co-claimants include Geoffrey Delaney, Happy Goat Coffee Company and a local workers’ union, per JCCF. The class action suit alleges protesters in Ottawa caused a nuisance via honking and diesel fumes worth $290 million in damages. Li told the court she was approached by a lawyer to be the point person, but in a 2022 video call with CBC, she said she instigated the class action herself. “It is my injunction that has to be used, considering that the first injunction should have most definitely been from the city, not from a resident who was so desperate that they need to take action by themselves,” she said..Li also spoke at the 2022 Action, Chinese Canadians Together (ACCT) summit, of which she was co-chair, where she further described her viewpoint on instigating a class action lawsuit. “I'm kind of just a normal person,” Li said. “I'm just a dude that saw some things that I didn't agree with and I said ‘hey, let's do something about that.’” “I would like to reiterate that it was insane, like it was the strangest twilight zone purge scenario where people weren't quite purging, but the opportunity was there because there were there just no laws being enforced.”“It was this crazy, crazy thing, with hot tubs and right-wing extremists and then right-wing moderates. “There are people out there saying that I'm not real, I am a government plant. And while I might work for the government, I’m here as an individual citizen with personal opinions about the gross miscarriage of justice that has gone on in Ottawa.”“The overarching message of the occupation of Ottawa is not that they need their freedom back, but they need some very basic civil education about how our country works and how our government works and just what an individual can and cannot do in Canada.”
