The well-worn expression that justice delayed is justice denied finds further validation in the case of two Alberta men involved in the Coutts border incident in 2022. Chris Carbert and Anthony Olienick had been charged with conspiracy to kill RCMP officers, but on August 2nd were declared ‘not guilty.’The verdict is welcome but it took more than 900 days to reach.Their lawyers have declared themselves somewhat satisfied with it. Still, the fact remains that the two men had been held in custody for two and a half years. And while it is true that they were eventually found guilty of mischief to property and possession of a weapon for a dangerous purpose, these offences seem unlikely to generate a sentence greater than 900 days.In other words, given the outcome they have served rather more than their time and bail was asked for but never granted.Was justice served here?Or merely a government’s desire to trouble those who troubled it?It would take a public enquiry to determine that. And given the issues involved — the perceived challenge to the Government of Canada’s use of its Emergencies [War Measures] Act in early 2022 versus the similarly reasonable right Canadian citizens enjoy to protest how the state asserts the authority that citizens yield to it as the price of public order — that would also be the logical next step for Government of Alberta.Of course, the acquittal of conspiracy to commit murder, in and of itself, does not automatically mean that it was necessarily wrong to keep Carbert and Olienick locked up pending trial. The charges were serious.Nor does the acquittal mean that the prosecution was necessarily malicious or baseless. So, while it would be possible for a well-informed person to criticize the judges who denied defence counsel bail applications, the judges may have had their reasons. It rather depends upon the evidence the Crown put forward when claiming that the accused were such a serious risk to the public that they really needed to stay in jail pending trial. Again, this would be a good question for an enquiry to answer.But the question does not go away… what took the Crown so long to assemble its case?We are entirely in sympathy with John Carpay, President of the Justice Centre for Constitutional Freedoms when he observes, “Canadians seeking justice in the courts should be able to get rulings in a matter of weeks or months, not years. It should not take years to obtain a court ruling about the guilt or innocence of people who are jailed pending trial.”We might add on a historical note that it should not take years either, to obtain a court ruling regarding the violations of Charter rights and freedoms by lockdowns. Such was the case in Ingram v. Alberta, where it took almost as long to obtain a ruling that Alberta’s lockdowns were illegal, as it did to find Carbert and Olienick not guilty.Be that as it may, these two men lost two and a half years of their lives waiting for a trial that resulted in being acquitted of the most serious charges they faced.Even if there were good reasons for keeping these men in jail pending trial, it should not have taken the Crown this long to assemble its evidence and provide it to defence counsel and to the court.What really happened here?Let’s find out.
