Attempt to re-jail Freedom Convoy organizer fails

Tamara Lich can now travel to Ontario, and “courts are not thought police” | Justice Center for Constitutional Freedoms:

May 25, 2022 - "The Justice Centre has reviewed the decision of Ontario Superior Court Justice Kevin Phillips regarding the appeal of Tamara Lich’s bail conditions. Ms. Lich was one of the participants of the peaceful protest in Ottawa against vaccine passports this past February. 

"In a decision given orally on May 25, 2022, Justice Phillips said the Courts are not 'thought police' and are not in the business of controlling political views. While Justice Phillips upheld a sweeping social media ban which Ms. Lich’s lawyer objected to, he also said that Ms. Lich has the presumption of innocence, and did not find that she violated any of her previous bail conditions.... Justice Philips set new bail conditions.... Ms. Lich is prohibited from communicating with other pro-freedom activists, using social media, organizing or aiding protests, and entering the downtown part of Ottawa unless for court.

"During the bail appeal hearing that took place on May 19 and 20, 2022, Assistant Crown Attorney Moiz Karimjee argued that Ms. Lich should be put back in jail because she had accepted the Justice Centre’s 2022 George Jonas Freedom Award. Mr. Karimjee suggested that Ms. Lich had breached her bail conditions by agreeing to attend the June 16 Justice Centre’s George Jonas Freedom Award dinner in Toronto, however there was no evidence before the Court that she planned to attend in person. When Ottawa police sergeant Mahad Hassan was called to give evidence for the Crown, he had no evidence other than a post on the Justice Centre website about the June 16 dinner. Sgt. Hassan speculated with his own opinion that it was a reasonable inference that Ms. Lich was attending at the annual award....

"Lawrence Greenspon, counsel for Ms. Lich, argued for the lifting of the bail conditions, specifically the ban on social media, which prevented Ms. Lich from exercising her Charter freedoms of expression and association. He argued that a finding in favour of the Crown would put the criminal justice system in disrepute.

"Justice Philips said, 'No court will ever seek to control the manifestation of political views. The courts are not the thought police and are only meant to control conduct.' However, Justice Philips justified leaving the complete social media ban in an attempt to 'prevent toxic group think.'

"On February 17, 2022, Ms. Lich was charged with counselling to commit mischief and obstructing police, among other charges. The day before Ms. Lich was charged and jailed, Ontario Superior Court Justice Hugh McLean had decreed that Ms. Lich and other Defendants in a civil action to stop honking in downtown Ottawa were 'at liberty to engage in a peaceful, lawful and safe protest.' The Prime Minister [had] declared a national emergency on February 14, in spite of the fact that Ottawa police had not arrested any of the peaceful protesters or charged anyone with a crime in the preceding weeks. Ms. Lich was jailed for 18 days, and eventually released on bail....

"'In our criminal justice system – innocent until proven guilty – and for someone with no previous criminal charges, it is our view that these revised bail conditions still excessively restrict Ms. Lich’s fundamental Charter rights of speech, assembly, association, and political advocacy,” said Eva Chipiuk, Justice Centre lawyer. 'The extent to which the Crown has pursued Ms. Lich is troubling. Homicide detectives, crown attorneys, and scarce court time are being expended on persecuting Ms. Lich and her peaceful activism against two years of repressive government lockdowns and mandatory vaccination policies,' added Ms. Chipiuk."

Read more: https://www.jccf.ca/tamara-lich-can-now-travel-to-ontario-and-courts-are-not-thought-police/ 

George Jonas a lifelong believer in freedom

Robert Fulford: George Jonas was an enemy of every oppression, great or small | National Post:

January 11, 2016 - "For many years after the Second World War, Canadians had trouble understanding the immigrants who flowed in from eastern Europe. Their stories of oppression weren’t always taken seriously. Ukrainians, Hungarians, Poles and many others were embittered after losing their national homes to the Russian empire but Canadians found that hard to grasp. Newspaper editorials often instructed immigrants — Displaced Persons, or DPs, they were often called — that they must not bring old enmities into Canadian life.

"George Jonas, a Hungarian who became a distinguished Canadian writer, was sophisticated enough to treat that provincial attitude with an urbane shrug. He remained forever an enemy of the Soviet Union and all other despotisms.

"With his opinions uninhibited, he plunged into a six-decades-long career in Canada as poet, playwright, novelist, CBC broadcaster and journalist, ending up with the widespread respect of his profession and membership in the Order of Canada. He died Sunday in Toronto at age 80.

"A lifelong belief in freedom ran like an electric current through his poetry, his fiction and his journalism. Long-established Canadians tend to take freedom for granted, never having known its opposite, but where Jonas came from it was scarce. As a child in the early 1940s, he was made to wear a yellow star on the street, like all other Jews. After 1945 he watched the Soviet Union impose a dreary and evil dictatorship on Hungary.

"Freedom was the song Jonas sang, in all his writing He never gave up trying to protect freedom — from communists, fascists, Islamists or any other totalitarians. I can’t forget the contempt he expressed in the 1960s when describing a Canadian nationalist poet who said that Mao’s China sounded like an admirable society. How could those who were born to freedom consider bartering it away, even in imagination? 

"Freedom was the song Jonas sang, in all his writing. He proudly called himself a classical liberal. Many people think that means a conservative but he believed it meant he was an enemy of every oppression, great or small."

Read more:  http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/robert-fulford-george-jonas-was-an-enemy-of-every-oppression-great-or-small
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George Jonas: I'm an "old-fashioned liberal"

George Jonas: Don’t call me a libertarian | Full Comment | National Post:

January 16, 2013 - "I’m not a libertarian. Nor am I a libertine, in case you wondered. I’m just a liberal, an old-fashioned liberal, therefore often mistaken for a conservative. I’m committed to individual freedom, as liberals used to be in the 18th and 19th centuries. That was in the days when liberalism saw itself as a force for liberty, and liberty a value equal to life. “Give me Liberty or give me Death,” said Patrick Henry and presumably he meant it.

"Those days are long gone. By the time I was born in the mid-1930s, the state had staged a triumphant comeback. Even in western-style democracies, statism was the only game in town. People shopping for a non-statist choice in political philosophy were limited to anarchy and nihilism....

"I preferred to gnash my teeth as a 19th-century liberal rather than as a libertarian, anarcho-libertarian or nihilist. Why couldn’t I accommodate myself to statism? I’m allergic, I suppose, to what Shakespeare called 'the insolence of office,' a.k.a. the normal speaking voice of government.

"Perhaps what I resent in the state most is my own need for it. Government is like medicine, only more so. Anything strong enough to help is strong enough to harm, and government’s capacity to hurt is at least equal to its capacity to cure. Just like medicine, government is poison outside its therapeutic dosage, and it can be toxic even within therapeutic limits because of anticipated side effects poorly tolerated or unexpected side effects not tolerated at all."

Read more: http://fullcomment.nationalpost.com/2013/01/19/george-jonas-dont-call-me-a-libertarian/
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