A person passes police officers in their vehicles on Wellington Street in front of Parliament Hill as demonstrators mark the one year anniversary of the Freedom Convoy on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, on Sunday, Jan. 29, 2023. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Justin Tang
OTTAWA – The criminal trial of two “Freedom Convoy” organizers is expected to resume with legal sparring between the defence and Ottawa police in an attempt to gain access to internal police communications.
The trial was stalled last week when the lawyers for Tamara Lich and Chris Barber asked for internal emails about the evidence that police disclosed in the case.
The defence teams received heavily redacted copies of the emails, the details of which the Ottawa Police Service says are protected by solicitor-client privilege.
The defence also wants to see what the police IT team told officers about a software upgrade for their cellphones, which appears to have wiped the data from the phones of at least two officers shortly after the protest ended.
So far, they have received only a completely blacked-out document about the software upgrade, which may have deleted messages between Barber and police liaison officer Const. Nicole Bach.
Lich and Barber are accused of mischief and counselling others to commit mischief, among other charges, for their role in organizing and prolonging the demonstrations that gridlocked downtown Ottawa for three weeks early last year.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 26, 2023.
