Wednesday, February 14, 2024, marked 2 years since Justin Trudeau invoked the Emergencies Act (also referred to as the EMA, or Emergency Measures Act) in Canada, which gave the powers of near Martial Law to the Federal Government in its efforts to ‘deal’ with the largest peaceful protest in Canadian history.
Readers of this Substack and many people paying attention know most of the rough details about The Freedom Convoy, and how this expression of popular revolt against 2 years of insane Covid policies and Medical Apartheid that completely ruptured Canadian society, had captured the imaginations of millions in Canada and around the world. Most of you will also be aware of the situation with the Coutts Four men arrested at that time, and if you don’t, I recommend having a look through the back catalog of this Substack.
Two years later, and actions that happened downstream of this fateful declaration are still being litigated, and many people’s lives continue to hang in the balance.
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On Tuesday, February 6, in a courtroom in Lethbridge, Alberta, news came that two of the Coutts 4 men, Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak, had signed plea deals and were released from jail almost immediately.
The details of this plea deal are quite an indictment of the case against these men, as all of the original charges against them were dropped, and the pleas which got them out were for different and much lessor charges.
Friend and fellow chronicler of Canada’s newfound shame,
beat me to the punch on discussing the details of what went down on February 6, and I will be quoting her piece here, given that we are sympatico on this story, and that Roxanne, like legitimate journalists of yore, asks the questions our current crop of Regime Fellating Whores do not.
On Tuesday, February 5th, 2024, the men known as the Coutts Four made headlines for the first time in two years. For the first time since they were arrested at the border blockade protest in Coutts, Alberta in 2022 and charged with mischief, possession of a weapon for dangerous purposes, and the very serious offence of conspiracy to murder police. They made headlines then because they were accused of being part of a ‘terrorist’ group who were planning to kill cops. They’ve made headlines now because two of the men, Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak, who have been in custody since the day they were arrested –723 days in jail – without a trial or a conviction – took a plea deal on lesser charges and are free men. That’s how most headlines read.
But the real headline should have been — Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston dismisses the charges of conspiring to kill cops against two of the Coutts Four. Charges of mischief were also dropped and the charge against Lysak, of uttering threats, was also dropped. All gone and forgotten – like they never happened – as though the charges had never been laid. But they were, and these two men spent two years behind bars, for something the Crown now admits they didn’t do, or at the very least, doesn’t have the evidence to prove they did what they were accused of.
I’m going to give Roxanne the credit of being diplomatic and engaging in ‘proper’ reporting etiquette for her last sentence here, which leaves the Crown some options, or an out, as it were, as to what exactly happened with these charges, and why they have now been vaporized.
I, however, have no such compunction, and contextualizing and situating this case in the zoomed out political zeitgeist leaves me with a different conclusion.
The Crown NEVER had a case, at all, and at best what they did have was a fantasy concocted at the last minute under direct orders from Ottawa.
Let us remember that three of the Coutts men were arrested on February 13, and the fourth, Jerry Morin, was arrested on his way to work the next morning, February 14, several hours before the Emergencies Act was invoked.
The charges of conspiracy to commit murder came down the next day on February 15.
9 other people were arrested or charged at this time, all of whom were either released shortly after, not detained at all, or granted bail.
Many of the accusations and charges related to those men who have been held for two years applied equally to some of those 9 people; remember that famous staged photo of all those guns, and the subsequent gun charges? Many of those guns and other materials didn’t even belong to the four men implicated in the ‘conspiracy’, and the Crown knew it. Jerry Morin, specifically, had no guns on site at all, which made the charges against him all the more ridiculous.
NEEDLE SCRATCH ON RECORD NOISE
I have been trying to write this piece since the news of Jerry and Chris being offered the plea deals over two weeks ago. It is now late February, and I have yet to get time to finish this motherfucker and get it out the door.
Significant developments have taken place in the meantime.
During pre-trial hearings which resumed on February 20, it seemed the Crown was having some issues getting RCMP witnesses to remember court schedules, which lead to yet more delays, and it also appears that some significant dates and their relevance to warrants have become a problem for the Crown’s story.
An application filed by the defense seeks to have the search warrant used by RCMP to enter trucks and travel trailers used by the defendants tossed out, and subsequent seized evidence would hopefully be disqualified from use in the trial. The basis of this application is that the judge erred in issuing the warrant at all, due to insufficient grounds used for granting it, and that the ITO (Information To Obtain) paperwork was manipulated before getting to the judge.
It bears repeating, again, that all of those guns were legally owned and acquired, and many of them owned by people who were not detained without trial nor bail for two years. There was never a conspiracy to murder anyone, and there’s even less of an argument that can be made to support that claim with some of the evidence most likely being dismissed.
Speaking of those insufficient grounds for granting the search warrant, a second application filed by the defense in relation to how it was issued, resulted in cross examination of certain officers involved with the ITO.
The defense alleges that both the RCMP and Crown engaged in ‘subversion’ in order to convince the issuing judge to grant the warrant. Once examined, it appears that neither of the officers stories lined up, and reports from those in the court room at the time of cross examination indicate that the judge did not look pleased with either Crown prosecutor Steven Johnston, or those RCMP officers.
Something else to consider here is that RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki was alleging to Trudeau and his “Incident Response Group”, during the day of February 13th, that protesters at Coutts were armed and of significant concern … except the warrants, which did not specify that guns would be searched for, were not executed until the 14th.
It was reported in American Media, way back in November of 2022, that Justin Trudeau and Joe Biden had a meeting on February 11 about how the Freedom Convoy protest sites along the border would be dealt with.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg phoned his Canadian counterpart, Transport Minister Omar Alghabra, the same day Deese called Freeland, according to the report, and Buttigieg pressed Alghabra about Canada’s “plan to resolve” the protests.
Alghabra told the commission that Buttigieg initiated the call and that the interaction was “unusual.”
Brian Clow, deputy chief of staff to Canada’s prime minister, also heard from White House aides, including National Security Council director Juan Gonzalez, who wanted to connect Canadian national security officials with the US Department of Homeland Security.
A phone call between President Biden and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau took place the following day, on Feb. 11, where Trudeau conveyed to the commander-in-chief that Ottawa had a plan to end the blockades.
Given that Lucki and Trudeau have had a previous engagement where Lucki ran interference on an investigation of national concern, namely, the Portapique Massacre in Nova Scotia, as Trudeau had sought to use this tragic shooting to benefit proposed gun control legislation off the backs of the dead, people paying attention to Coutts should also be asking just exactly what was going on here.
The evidence, including interviews with senior RCMP officers and officials — including handwritten notes — are enough to call for Trudeau and RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki to resign.
The report, released Tuesday by the public inquiry into the mass shooting that took place in Nova Scotia on April 18-19, 2020, paints a grim picture.
It shows a national police force that is in disarray and clearly prone to political interference — something that should never happen.
The report includes testimony from Supt. Darren Campbell, who was the public face of the RCMP in Nova Scotia and Lia Scanlan, director of communications for the Mounties in the region. They both described a meeting they were summoned to on April 28, one week after the shooting.
RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki was upset that those leading the investigation in Nova Scotia had not released the kinds of firearms used by the killer, something investigators said would compromise their work.
“The commissioner said she had promised the Minister of Public Safety and the Prime Minister’s Office that the RCMP (we) would release this information,” read the handwritten notes Campbell took at the time.
“I tried to explain there was no intent to disrespect anyone; however, we could not release this information at this time. The commissioner then said that we didn’t understand, that this was tied to pending gun control legislation that would make officers and the public safer.”
Scanlan, in an interview with the inquiry, backed up what was in Campbell’s notes and said that Trudeau and then-public safety minister Bill Blair were interfering, “weighing in on what we could and couldn’t say.”
Perhaps the media are not interested in investigating all of the smoke coming from this dumpster fire, as no dead bodies are involved, only spurious allegations that there might be some. But it sure seems to me like Trudeau was on a fishing expedition to justify his invocation of the Emergencies Act, Lucki was involved, and some fairly dodgy business was going on with local RCMP at Coutts.
But if we dig some more into this case, we find that the media are also disinclined to inquire about yet more of the evidence being used to prosecute the men as vaporware, especially so much of the prosecution which took place in the court of public opinion.
Another factor here that is becoming extremely tiresome to have to bring up, are those patches that were seen on one of the vests seized and placed in that staged photo; however, the freak out over that vest makes a connection to the leader of the Conservative Party, Pierre Poilievre, and gives us an indication for why the Conservatives have done exactly nothing to help in this gross miscarriage of justice, and the small media ecosystem whom serve them have done even less.
The home made patches in question allude to a loosely affiliated podcast fanboy network who, in the minds of taxpayer funded conspiracy theorists, were a heavily armed terrorist group that was about to take over the country.
For more info on this connection, and the freak out over this group, I will once again reference Roxanne Halverson, who reports here -
This is a long and detailed piece examining how Diagolon, a literal meme and figment of a man’s imagination, were laundered by a taxpayer funded “social justice activist” group called The Canadian Anti-Hate NetworkThe Northern Poverty Law Center into becoming a threat to the nation.
Funny how the media failed to report on documents showing that the attempt to connect Diagolon to the Coutts Men failed, and that no evidence existed, whatsoever, that Diagolon were anything these screeching harpies made them out to be.
I spoke with Caryma Sa’d, the lawyer who went through all of these documents, last summer. As far as I know, not a single Mainstream Media reporter has approached her about the damning revelations within them, as yet.
Poilievre was also seen in a photo with Mackenzie at a meet and greet, which then caused the entire Canadian media establishment to melt down for several news cycles.
Poilievre immediately responded to the drunken comments from Mackenzie by referring to Diagolon as a bunch of losers, and given the noise coming from one member of that camp as of late (not Mackenzie), Poilievre might not be wrong.
That said, lewd comments, and hosting a podcast with opinions not shared by the mainstream, are not yet illegal, and also not the sort of evidence that should have been used to launch the Emergencies Act. Again, for more info on this particular part of the story, see my interview above with Caryma S’ad.
One wonders if Poilievre has sent out a memo to the entire party to not discuss the absolute travesty of injustice taking place against the Coutts guys because he’s salty about Mackenzie talking shit about his wife. Once.
I’m not a huge fan of the CONservatives, but they often invoke principles, and talk endlessly about Freedom and Democracy and Rule of Law and Free Speech and all the same bromides and clichés we hear from other political parties around the world. Well, Pierre, your country now has a legitimate case of political prisoners, and not you, nor a single member of your party has lifted a finger to ask some extremely important questions about this case.
As I said in an article over at Newsweek when charges against Jerry Morin and Chris Lysak were dropped -
Unfortunately, few Canadians know the extent of the abuse of their rights. Canada's media is completely in the bag for the Trudeau regime. At the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC), an inquest which took place eight months after the Convoy, the largest and most peaceful protest in Canadian history, it was revealed that the media had lied to the Canadian people repeatedly about what went on at the protests; none of the alleged violence actually took place, and the threshold for invoking emergency powers was not met, per the testimony of dozens of government officials.
The most heinous of the charges leveled against two of the men freed this week have now been dropped, bringing into question once again the suspension of Canadian civil liberties, and reveals more clearly than ever that the Coutts Four have been political prisoners from the start, imprisoned on spurious grounds for daring to oppose the Trudeau Regime's COVID policies.
Given the political implications, lack of evidence, and outright campaign of silence around this case, one would think that investigative journalists would be all over it, asking hard questions about why a modern western nation state has political prisoners. It is long past time for the Canadian media to stop colluding with the government it's supposed to be covering critically. We need to be asking some hard questions about what happened with the Coutts Four: Were the charges laid against them politically motivated? Why did the Crown take so long to get this trial underway? Why did a judge deny them bail twice? Why were these men kept in solitary confinement?
There has been ZERO interest from the Conservative media sphere about this case, whatsoever. I’ve emailed The National Post, various prominent podcasters and Team Blue journos about it, and nada, nothing.
One person who spoke to me ‘off the record’ about this, so shall remain nameless, tells me that the CONservatives and many involved in their media, including those friendly to the Freedom Convoy folks, want a seamless transition for Poilievre’s ascendancy to Prime Minister in the next election. They literally live in fear of talking about the Coutts situation, because the usual communist fucktards at CBC or in the NDP or whoever will say mean things about them for supporting ‘terrorists’.
Some of these CONservative media folks, I can only surmise from this video, are just plain ignorant of the case, and also ignorant of the political battlefields we fight on in 2024.
Voters who typically lean conservative, rightly despise the mainstream media, and are more than likely Freedom Convoy supporters, do not want spineless jellyfish representing them.
Maybe its the party who this fat blowhard serves, and not the voters amongst his viewership -
If this is the best the CONservative media can come up, and the wall of silence from them as deafening as that coming from CBC/CTV/Global/the newspapers, then we really are on our own out here.
Let’s recap -
- The heinous charges of ‘conspiracy to murder police officers’ were dropped against two of the four men, along with all of the other charges thrown at them, and they took plea deals; one, on a minor technical gun transportation charge, and the other on a conspiracy theory put forward by the Crown that is about to be immolated or tossed out of court.
Remember, these are not pleas, and in no part of the universe does two years behind bars not do a man’s head in. They were offered immediate release; if you think in their heart of hearts that they were legitimately admitting guilt to anything, I’ve got some oceanfront property for you in Florida for sale
- In pre-trial hearings against the other two, the Crown’s primary evidence used to concoct their fantasy is being dissembled, and will most likely be ruled inadmissable at trial.
- It has been shown that Trudeau and his cabinet were discussing invocating the Emergencies Act by the end of the first week of protest, and were in meetings with Joe Biden and Pete Buttigieg discussing a plan before anyone even mentioned any supposed plot at Coutts.
- The RCMP commissioner and Trudeau have a history of interfering in politically charged cases, and the commissioner presented him with claims about things that had no way of being confirmed til the next day.
- Pre-trial hearings in this case appear to have been deliberately delayed until after the conclusion of the Public Order Emergency Commission (POEC).
- Justice Rouleau’s ruling at POEC hinges on information obtained from Coutts that had not yet been tested in court; without the Coutts men being guilty, that ruling becomes false and without legitimation.
- A conspiracy of silence exists in all parts of Canadian media, mainstream and even some areas of supposedly alternative media. Some of these people claim that they are prevented from reporting on this case by a publication ban, knowing full well that the ban only applies to details around the original ITOs submitted by the RCMP.
As for the second ban on reporting anything from pre-trial hearings, which is a new development in Canada, downstream from a recent Supreme Court ruling, I would submit to you that big media names in Canada have big media friends in the United States to whom they could send details.
Remember Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka? A publication ban was enacted on that extremely huge case, which more or less gripped the entire nation. Many Canadians were only made aware of certain details because of the efforts of American journalists in Buffalo, NY.
I understand that Crown Prosecutor Steven Johnston is Big Mad, as the kids say, about certain reporting that has come out of Lethbridge as of late, and has made not very subtle threats against various people who have been discussing this issue online.
Mr Johnston, who has done nothing about those media who continue to host live webpages in direct contravention of the first publication ban, can eat a huge bag of dicks; your hypocrisy means that I’m happy to carry on reporting what an embarrassment to Canada you and everyone else involved in punishing these men are.
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I would submit to you that when the dust settles on all of this, the first real conspiracy will be revealed to involve Trudeau, perhaps the President of The United States or his underlings, former RCMP Commissioner Lucki, Crown Prosecutor Steven Johnston, and numerous others.
The second conspiracy is amongst the cowards who make up our media class, and the complicity they share in the railroading of these men.
Speaking of Trish, she represents what the CBC and other media used to do, which is to ask the hard questions and hold power to account. An investigation into this case would have been something she would have done well in her days at The Fifth Estate.
If nothing else, at least pass this article around, and ask yourself what kind of Canada you think you live in today.
As always, questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail, are both welcomed and strongly encouraged -
gordilocks@protonmail.com
Autonomous Truck(er)s accepts no taxpayer handouts, and Takes No Shit from our ruling class and their sycophants. If you get something out of my work, maybe you can donate something in return; or at least subscribe and share.
Another good one Gord. Like that you brought in the writings of some of the few honest journalists left here in this country.
Excellent summary and very well written. Thanks for posting this information