Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has been accused of tyrannical tendencies for holding “political prisoners” in jail for more than two years.
Newsweek’s Opinion Editor Batya Ungar-Sargon unleashed on Trudeau while on Fox Business on Friday, describing him as the “liberal face of fascism and authoritarianism”.
“He likes to fly around the country, fly around the world, lecturing people about climate change and human rights, and meanwhile at home he literally has political prisoners for the crime of dissenting,” she said.
“This man smeared these truckers who came out in a non-violent way to protest the Covid overreach and the Covid regime, he put them in jail. There are four guys, the Coutts Four, look it up, who are sitting in prison and haven’t seen their families for two years for the crime of dissent.”
A Canadian federal court judge last week ruled that Trudeau’s use of Canada’s Emergencies Act to quash the Freedom Convoy trucker protests of 2022 was a violation of rights and “not justified”.
Trudeau invoked the act for the first time in its history to give police extraordinary powers to remove vehicles from the streets, arrest protesters and seize bank accounts of participants.
The Emergencies Act requires “an emergency that arises from threats to the security of Canada that are so serious as to be a national emergency” for a public emergency order to be declared, and Federal Court Justice Richard Mosley found that threshold was not reached.
“I conclude that there was no national emergency justifying the invocation of the Emergencies Act and the decision to do so was therefore unreasonable and ultra vires [beyond the scope of law],” Mr Mosley wrote in his decision on January 23.
The Coutts Four – Chris Carbert, Anthony Olienick, Jerry Morin and Christopher Lysak – have been held since February 2022 accused of conspiring to murder RCMP officers, and have been continually denied bail, which is rare in Canada.
They were arrested while attending a Freedom Convoy blockade of the US border crossing in Coutts, Alberta.
Speaking to Bridge City News last week, Carbert’s mother Betty said she believed the four were being held as political prisoners, and stated that “nothing in this case has been what lawyers would call normal”.
“They assumed many things, like for example bail, that they would be getting out, because nobody is held without bail in Canada, but apparently with these four that’s not true,” she said.
“I can’t speak of the information that they supposedly have on the men, but I will say that it seems a little ‘fudged’, for lack of a better word.”
Ms Carbert also said she has received no help from her local elected representatives, one of whom refused to even discuss it.
Justin Trudeau is the face of liberal authoritarianism. He flies around the globe lecturing people about climate change & human rights—meanwhile at home, he has political prisoners languishing in prison for the crime of taking part in nonviolent protests like the Freedom Convoy. pic.twitter.com/u2M2UPXSwb
— Batya Ungar-Sargon (@bungarsargon) January 26, 2024
