The Crown has Nothing on Anyone at Coutts

Updates on pre-trial hearings, including info you are prevented from reading by law in Canada.

Outside Lethbridge Courthouse

Court proceedings for a number of those involved with the Coutts Freedom Convoy protest will be resuming soon; pre-trial hearings for Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert resume on March 18, and the trial of Marco Van Huigenbos, who had become the de-facto representative of the protesters at Coutts, and a number of his co-accused, get under way on April 2.

Pre-trial hearings for Van Huigenbos and Co. wrapped up recently, and some interesting responses from the Crown to defense applications took place.

There are a number of rulings on defense applications expected to come down on the 18th for Carbert and Olienick, and as with the other case, the actions of the Crown continue to call into question the legitimacy of the charges these men face.

Two mainstream media pieces have come out this week which touch on the Coutts situation, one of which contains some revealing information about the RCMP and what they know, and didn’t know, and didn’t tell their own officers at Coutts. As always, this info presents more questions than answers, but in general, it casts yet more doubt on the original charges against the four men, and those outstanding against Carbert and Olienick.


You might ask why there won’t be much in the way of links to anything I am presenting here about the pre-trial hearings, and that is because of the publication ban which is now law in Canada with regards to any pre-trial hearings.

Thankfully, my expatriated ass is no longer a prisoner of the Maple Gulag, and I can relay to you what I please from my sources in Alberta, who shall remain anonymous.


Marco Van Huigenbos, Alex Van Herk, George Janzen

Marco Van Huigenbos is a former town councillor for Fort Macleod, a town north of the border community of Coutts where Freedom Convoy protests took place in 2022.

He, along with Mr Van Herk and Mr Janzen, were charged with ‘mischief over $5000’ for their participation in those protests. Like the Coutts Four men, they were merely exercising their right to protest in standing up to air their concerns over the utterly gross overreach of Justin Trudeau’s Covid Regime, a right that was once guaranteed under Canada’s Charter of Rights and Freedoms. The Charter, like so many other contracts between state and citizen across the West, can now best be described as used toilet paper.

A brief interview with Mr Van Huigenbos -

Mr Van Huigenbos had emerged as a spokesperson for the Coutts protest site, that much like every other Freedom Convoy protest action, was spontaneously organized and had no clear leadership. For putting his best foot forward, and taking on the role of interfacing with RCMP, community leaders in Coutts, and the media, Mr VanHuigenbos, like Tamara Lich and Chris Barber in Ottawa, had marked himself as an enemy of the state.

Mr Van Herk has already been punished - he had an excavator amongst three parked near the highway in Coutts as part of the collective expression of protest. He was asked to move them away from the road, and did so, walking them not very far from the road onto private property which he had permission to park them on.

Not long later, it is alleged that RCMP vandalized his equipment, removing oil and fuel filters and filling the ports with spray foam and otherwise attempting to immobilize the equipment, imposing significant costs in damage and repair.

In the 3 days of pre-trial hearings for these men, defense counsel brought forward two applications that the Crown opposed.

One application is to allow the Jury to be notified of their rights, such as the right to ask questions, or the right to nullify charges.

Jury Nullification is explained here -

Jury nullification refers to a jury's knowing and deliberate rejection of the evidence or refusal to apply the law either because the jury wants to send a message about some social issue that is larger than the case itself, or because the result dictated by law is contrary to the jury's sense of justice, morality, or fairness. Essentially, with jury nullification, the jury returns a “not guilty” verdict even if jurors believe beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant broke the law. This can occur because a not guilty verdict cannot be overturned and jurors are protected regardless of their verdicts. 

As regards jury nullification in Canada -

Although extremely rare, jury nullification occurs in Canada. As the prosecution has powers to appeal the resulting acquittal, it lacks the finality found in the United States. However, the Crown cannot appeal on grounds of an unreasonable acquittal although it can appeal on errors of law. In R. v. Latimer, 2001 SCC 1,^[33] the Supreme Court discussed jury nullification and indicated that it is a duty of the presiding justice to try to prevent it from occurring.

The Supreme Court in 2006 issued a decision, R. v. Krieger, 2006 SCC 47,^[35] which confirmed that juries in Canada have the power to refuse to apply the law when their consciences require that they do so. The decision stated that "juries are not entitled as a matter of right to refuse to apply the law—but they do have the power to do so when their consciences permit of no other course".^[35]

The other application is to have the jury notified of their rights of conscientious objection, which is related to nullification, somewhat, in that jurors can agree with the actions of the accused, and as a matter of conscience, object to the charges and acquit them as such.

The Crown opposing these applications speaks volumes.

The charges against the men, like the charges against the Coutts Four, are politically motivated, and the Crown knows it. Given this motivation, it is highly likely that a juror would side with Van Huigenbos + Co and acquit or nullify, and the opposition to these applications makes it clear that the Crown considers this a possible and likely outcome.

As in the trial of Chris Barber and Tamara Lich, it appears that the bulk of the evidence that the Crown will be using to make their arguments against Van Huigenbos will be his social media posting, which is nothing if not exonerating should conscientious objection or nullification be part of the jurors considerations. Asking for the country to be freed of ridiculous mandates, emphasizing the peaceful nature of the protest, and otherwise fairly normal messaging can only be seen as criminal activity by a maximally negative interpretation, which seems to be the Crown’s strategy; thus the objections to the applications.

Another concerning possibility coming out of the pre-trial hearing was verbiage heard from the Judge that a publication ban may be sought on the trial itself.

Though that seems highly unlikely, one has to wonder just what is so terrible about a mischief trial that the public must be prevented from hearing about it? To my mind, it seems like the government is trying to save itself embarrassment; who knows.

We will find out on April 2.

We should also remember that in good ol’ Canada, a mischief conviction carries a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison, which should give you some indication of why Trudeau and the Crown are so doggedly pursuing these trumped up cases - its all about punishment of the designated boogiemen, a futile exercise in bogus legitimation at the potential expense of these men’s freedom.





Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert; the Coutts ‘2’

Tuesday, February 6 saw the release of Chris Lysak and Jerry Morin on a plea deal from their two years of unjustified incarceration in relation to Coutts protests.

Regular readers of this Substack will know that all of the original charges against Morin and Lysak were dropped. The plea deal for Lysak was for a technical gun handling charge he wasn’t originally charged with, and Morin signed off on a fantasy about bringing guns to the protest that is simply not true.

Two years inside will do incalculable harm to a man’s mental state, and we should bear in mind that Mr Morin, of the Coutts Four, probably had the roughest time of it - he was kept at a gang unit in Calgary with the best and brightest Canadian society has to offer, and also spent around 80 days being kept in solitary confinement, having yet to face trial and denied bail for political reasons. While he was in Calgary they also denied his wife any visitation to him for 19 months of his incarceration.

Heads should roll for that alone, and this particular part of the plea deal would be more accurately described as a false confession.

Pre-trial hearings for Olienick and Carbert will resume on March 18, and should start off with Justice David LaBrenz ruling on applications made by the defense on the legality of search warrants, ‘wiretaps’, and various of the evidence brought forward by the Crown.

Speaking of Justice LaBrenz, I am told that he has been unequivocal about the trial proceeding; previous speculation about the trial being dragged out to Jordan Rule limits, and thus allowing the government to wash its hands off this, are off the table. He intends to see this through, and that’s great news, as it allows for the possibility of investigating and possibly bringing various government actors to accountability once Olienick and Carbert are acquitted.

As mentioned in my previous Substack on these proceedings -

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.

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.

Much of the basis for the ITOs is built around generalized notes written down at the end of Under Cover Officer (UCO) shifts, relying solely on memory. Not exactly the most solid type of evidence, and may explain why they had to manipulate documentation in order to get the warrants.

This is where the seeds of the fantasy against the men were most likely sown; two hot young thing UCOs saddling up to the very outgoing Tony Olienick to see what kind of shit he would talk. It is completely imagineable that Olienick, not unlike myself, would have said something like “It’s a bummer these Cops are working for a bunch of fucking communists.”, and in the minds of the Crown that translates to ‘conspiracy to murder.’

Hopefully Justice LaBrenz sees the subterfuge engaged in here by the Crown; I am told that during cross-examination, one of the officers involved in submitting the ITOs for the warrants said that they “hoped” they would find evidence.

Well, that doesn’t sound very confident, does it?

It is worth going over what evidence the Crown will have left to work with, should Justice LaBrenz grant these applications and all of the evidence obtained under these warrants is thrown out.

Much like the cases of Marco Van Huigenbos, and Tamara Lich + Chris Barber, it appears that the social media postings of Tony Olienick will be under some scrutiny, which is to say the Crown will attempt to convince the jury of Olienick being an ‘Ideologically Motivated Violent Extremist’ by using maximally negative interpretations of Olienick’s videos posted online.

In this Instagram post from Tony, the night he was arrested, he can be heard wishing the cops would come and have coffee with him; sure sounds extreme, doesn’t it?

tony_o1911

A post shared by @tony_o1911

You have probably heard the term before, or seen the acronym IMVE floating around, as it is the governments overly verbose way of saying ‘WrongThinkers’ and serves as a boogieman for all of the usual suspects to point to when they need the average CBC Canadian to be afraid of something.

Another player in pre-trial hearings is a person named Barbara Perry, whom the Crown is hoping to use at trial as an expert witness. Ms Perry has a bit of history working with an organization you have read about here called the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, a taxpayer funded grift which exists to find WrongThinkers hiding under your nearest Inuksuk and then tell the government what it wants to hear about them. Perry sits on their advisory committee.

For more on CAHN and the debunked wild goose chase they lead our country on, please have a listen to my interview with Caryma Sa’d, where she goes over documents that show CAHN told Trudeau what he wanted to hear about certain supporters of the Freedom Convoy, and how that was laundered into legitimating invocation of the Emergencies Act, even though the claims of CAHN were shown to be false by CSIS, RCMP, and various other security and intel personnel.

Given that Perry is going to have some difficulty finding any hate in the words of Olienick or Carbert, nor connections to any of the groups which occupy so much of her research, the defense has correctly filed an application to have her removed from the trial. She might be an expert on ‘hate’, but there isn’t any here, its not germane to the charges, and her presence at trial is but a tactic on the part of the Crown to illegitimately connect the two men to the boogiemen Perry and her associates spend their careers manufacturing.

Playing Olienick’s videos at trial is going to be a farce, much like the use of so much video footage by the Crown in Ottawa in their attempt to convict Barber and Lich. The only ‘hate’ ever on display in Ottawa came from Police, Counter-protesters, and the media.

Tony Olienick often goes on at length about ‘love’ and ‘unity’ and wanting to heal the country and get Canada back on track. How hateful.

Something else to consider about the charges that Olienick and Carbert are facing is this -

Given that all of the original charges against Lysak and Morin were dropped, including the heinous ‘conspiracy to murder police officers’, in order for any charge of ‘conspiracy’ to stick with the other two … well, you need, at minimum, more than one person.

What about Carbert?

The evidence that the Crown has against Chris Carbert is, drum roll please …..

Nada, Zip, Zilch, Nothing, Zero, a whole lot of sailboat fuel.

Chris Carbert is the real fall guy here because the Crown is trying to make this a case about Tony Olienick, but in order to get a conspiracy charge to stick, they need at least one more person.

While we are here, there are two claims about Tony Olienick that the media put on full blast immediately after the arrests, and those media stories achieved their desired effect, because people keep mentioning two things, both of which are easily disproven or explained away as factors.

One is the amount of ammunition they found at Tony’s property. Ignoring the fact that having lots of ammunition doesn’t mean anything, as people stockpile it all the time, given constant noise from politicians like Trudeau or Barack Obama about imposing more restrictive gun legislation, the problem here is that all of it was at Tony’s property, over an hours drive away from the protest site. Not very handy for the supposed conspirators to just start blasting away at the cops in Coutts, don’t you think?

Another false narrative deployed by the media was claims of Tony having ‘pipe bombs’.
The media has done a real disservice to people in failing to inform the public that Tony Olienick ran a gravel quarry, and had municipal permits for using industrial explosives. Going to his property and finding them there does not a conspiracy to murder make.

The Crown let Lysak out because they literally had nothing on him, and the best they could come up with was a very minor gun mishandling charge. In order to maintain the fantasy, the Crown took advantage of Jerry Morin, who, as mentioned above, had spent two years of his life in a gang unit, inclusive of several stretches of solitary confinement while they had prevented his wife from visiting him for 19 months.

It bears repeating that Jerry Morin barely visited the Coutts site at all, had no guns at the site, and in the lead up to all of this, was mostly helping a friend work on a project in Vancouver Island. Some conspirator.

As the Crown had nothing on Carbert, and are staking their case on gross misinterpretations of Tony Olienick’s social media videos, they had to have something else, and thus the utterly stupid documents they got Jerry Morin to sign, while hanging the carrot of immediate release in front of his face.






Something else which is interesting about the Crown’s case is the reliance on ‘wiretaps’ which were placed on Olienick and Carbert’s mobile phones under the unauthorized claim of ‘imminent harm’. Those wiretaps began on February 11, and in all of the evidence recorded, not a single thing was said by either of the men which was illegal or implied any illegal activities. One would think imminent harm means just that, imminent, but no one was harmed at all between the wiretaps and the arrest, a period of three days.

You will also remember some drama from last year regarding an ‘envelope’ which was said to contain some damning evidence that Olienick’s previous counsel, Tonii Roulston, had referred to as ‘crime fraud’. The contents of that envelope remain under sealing orders, but it is believed that they are the notes from a seven minute long phone call between Crown Prosecutor Steven Johnston and the RCMP.

Remember, Johnston had been acting in an advisory capacity on the Coutts protest situation since February 2, which presents something of a dilemma regards conflict of interest now that he is prosecuting the case. This is Canada, however, the land where common sense and notions of what are right and wrong have long since expired.

It is unknown wether we will ever hear the details of that phone call, but given what we have seen with the Crown and their handling of this case thus far, it can’t be good for them, and it is thought amongst some that Steven Johnston ought to be “lawyering up” himself should those details ever become public.

Johnston has already proven that he believes himself above accountability, and can bully and threaten anyone who crosses him. As the pre-trial hearings were wrapping up, Johnston announced in the courtroom that ‘criminal investigations are underway’ against those whom he believed had breached the publication ban.

It might be an empty threat, bluster meant to have associates of mine in Alberta stop saying anything about this case at all. But he’s just proving himself to be a government bully working in service of the worst people in the country.

To Mr Johnston - I will say what I like from south of the border, thank you very much.

Maybe you should just drop the case, as it is abundantly clear you don’t have one; you are only here in a very long running interference operation for Justin Trudeau, to keep him from having some pointed questions asked about his actions. Do you feel no shame in bringing Political Prisoners to Canada?

Recent Mainstream Media

Two recent pieces in Canadian mainstream media have touched on the Coutts case.

Over at the Financial Post we have this commentary from someone named Gwyn Morgan.

The piece makes a good point about the gross double standard by which the Coutts Men were denied bail and kept in custody for nearly two years, contrasting them with violent offenders who are often turned loose on the streets immediately.

In discussing Lysak and Morin, however, he inaccurately describes them as ‘leaders’ of the Coutts encampment, which is a bit rich, given how little time Morin actually spent there, and the piece also fails to mention Tony Olienick or Chris Carbert at all, or the fact that they are still in custody. Seems quite the omission, no?

According to those in Alberta whom are closest to the case, that I am in regular contact with, none of them were contacted by Mr Morgan for comment or input, and near as I can tell, neither were any of the small handful of citizen journalists who have been covering the case.

There is a cost to mainstream media gatekeeping, and I guess they will bear it in the form of looking stupid, especially if this is the best they can come up with.

This piece published Saturday in the Montreal Gazette raises some very interesting questions about how the RCMP handled what they knew, or thought they knew, or fantasized about, with the protest site at Coutts.

An internal RCMP review of the force’s response to “Freedom Convoy” protests found that some officers at the scene of an Alberta blockade were unaware of threats to harm police until after the episode ended.

The after-action report says the survey found some personnel at Coutts “were not aware of the threats to police officers until after the blockade concluded. Others noted they only learned about the threats through media reporting.”

Interesting.

Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick’s phones, amongst others, were subject to an unauthorized wiretap on the claims of ‘imminent harm’, which was sought on February 10, with the wiretaps commencing on February 11.

If the RCMP really believed that harm against their officers was ‘imminent’, surely every officer on site would have been briefed on this? How is it that some officers only heard about this through the media after the fact?

It would be easy enough to assume that this just a case of Keystone Cops, where disorganization and incompetence are part of the deal. It is the RCMP, after all, who also failed to alert the residents of Nova Scotia in a timely manner when they knew that a shooter was running around and killing people there in 2020.

22 people were murdered in the Portapique massacre, and that number is as high as it is because of the RCMP.

Given what we know about communications between the highest levels of government, however, disorganization and incompetence merely serve as a smokescreen for something far more sinister.

On February 13 2022, (now former) RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki was in a meeting with (now former) Public Safety Minister Marco Mendocino, where she advised him about these ‘imminent harms’, and then Mendocino relayed this to Trudeau with unhinged verbiage about a ‘hardened cell of individuals, armed to the teeth with lethal firearms.’ Trudeau advised Mendocino to keep it to himself, at the time.

Except the warrants were not executed until the following day, February 14, and there was no way for Lucki nor Mendocino to back up the claims they had made the day before.

Much of these claims about the ‘imminent threat’ of violence revolve around maximally negative interpretations of rhetoric that was written down by Under Cover Officers; as mentioned above, when a wire tap was put on Olienick and Carbert’s phones on February 11, nothing was found that indicated anything illegal, right up until they were arrested.

So why the freak out? Why the ‘subversion’ and manipulation of ITOs? If any of this was true, why wasn’t every officer on scene informed? Why was Mendocino telling the public that there were scary extremists who were about to overthrow the government, but not telling the officers who were RIGHT THERE, and ostensibly at risk of being shot, imminently?

Seems like they got that famous photo of staged guns out to the public before they filled their own people in on the supposed risk they were facing. And just like they failed to inform their own officers of this supposed threat, they also failed to inform the public that many of the guns in that photo did not belong to the four men who spent two years of their lives in jail. 9 other people were arrested or charged in connection with the Coutts protest, some of whom may have had connections to those guns and claims of ‘imminent harm’. Yet none of them spent 2 years behind bars.

The government relies on ignorance and fear in order to set the narratives they want, especially when seeking convictions in the court of public opinion.

Perhaps that is why when Lysak and Morin were set free, there was very little coverage in the media, and of what little coverage there was, it was muted, and failed to ask some pretty glaring questions about why all of the original charges against them were dropped. It appears that, guns or not, the Crown didn’t have any evidence of harmful intent against either of them. So much for an imminent threat - are we now supposed to believe that we needed the Emergencies Act to quell an alleged conspiracy on the part of …. two men?

The media have also failed to ask many questions downstream of Mendocino’s testimony at the POEC, such as if these claims about the men at Coutts were a matter of political convenience for legitimating the Emergencies Act, especially given that Lucki claimed she sent an email stating there were other options for dealing with the situation, and that David Vigneault, head of CSIS, the Canadian Security and Intelligence Services, told the POEC that at no point did the Freedom Convoy constitute a threat to Canada.

Does the corruption go right to the ‘Incident Response Group’? To the Prime Ministers Office? They were in regular communication with American Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg and President Biden, with whom Trudeau had a meeting on February 11, telling Biden he ‘had a plan’ to deal with the border protests. Maybe the media should be asking more questions about just what that “plan” comprised of. Given Trudeau’s propensity for throwing members of his own party under the bus, why wouldn’t he do that to the Coutts Four? Its clear that Trudeau hates most of the people he claims to govern.

In the past week we have seen video footage of protests involving Hamas Enthusiasts, some who hurl legitimately violent rhetoric like ‘Death To Jews! Death to Israel!’, which is making things difficult for legitimate protesters who object to the IDF response in Gaza.

These groups have also interrupted and cancelled a meeting between Trudeau and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Miloni, and most recently, held a massive protest right in front of Parliament, with Wellington Street being closed off with marches taking place under the haze created by smoke bombs.

The questions about Trudeau’s milquetoast response to all of this, versus his bringing near Martial Law to Canada over the 100% peaceful Freedom Convoy, are also obvious and equally glaring, but you won’t hear them asked by Canada’s Fourth Estate, whom have also completely ignored the situation with these men. Why is it that an expat trucker, and a small handful of other citizen journalists, are the only people investigating what’s going on here?

We can’t let the government get away with this when Tony Olienick and Chris Carbert are acquitted of everything, because it sure seems like they are going to be, and the media can be counted on to run cover for their paymasters. This case was corrupt from the beginning, and all evidence points to a fantasy being concocted to legitimate Trudeau’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.

Without Coutts, there is no violence, nor threat thereof, anywhere at any protest site.
Without Coutts, Rouleau’s Public Order Emergency Commission ruling falls apart.

And this is before we even consider the recent Mosley decision which ruled the invocation of the Emergencies Act “not justified … unreasonable … unconstitutional” and had violated certain sections of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

It seems to me the only ‘conspiracy’ going on here was amongst Trudeau and his underlings, and it reached all the way down to members of the RCMP at Coutts, as well as to Johnston.

They put your right to protest and freedom of speech into question by unjustly and illegally locking up four men for two years of their lives.

Chris Carbert and Tony Olienick ought to be set free immediately, and an investigation, with teeth, called into everyone involved in making them the fall guys for Justin Trudeau.

The battle is not over, and legal bills continue to mount - if you can spare a few bucks to help these guys, donations can be made here -

https://www.givesendgo.com/trudeauspoliticalprisoners

Questions, comments, suggestions, corrections and Hate Mail are welcomed and encouraged - gordilocks@protonmail.com