Coutts trial puts convoy in spotlight
South of Calgary in Lethbridge a court case is unfolding that could tell us a lot about the 2022 Freedom Convoy and the people it attracted.
It is the trial of Chris Carbert and Anthony Olieneck, who are accused of conspiring to murder RCMP officers at the Coutts border crossing in Alberta during the height of the 2022 Freedom Convoy, which paralyzed other border crossing and downtown Ottawa.
Carbert and Olienick, who have pleaded not guilty, were arrested after police found a cache of guns, body armour and ammunition in trailers at the site.
“They planned and prepared for what they believed would be an inevitable, violent event,” prosecutor Matt Dalidowicz told jurors in his opening statement in early June. “They believed in their own minds that they had the right to act violently in response to police enforcing the law to end the blockade.”
An undercover police officer who infiltrated the Coutts border blockade says Olienick told her he was committed to the cause and vowed if police interfered, force would be met with force.
“He said this is war and why he is willing to give his life. This is ground zero,” the officer testified at the trial.
Undercover officers have also testified that Olienick told them police were pawns of the federal government and that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was the devil. Police should be hanged, he said, and if officers raided the blockade he would “slit their throats.”
In a 2022 police video shown to the jury, Olienick tells police he and others formed the blockade at the busy Canada-U.S. border crossing to take a stand against a takeover of Canadian freedoms by tyrants, including United Nations troops and Chinese communists.
“We’re just trying to be protectors. That’s all,” says Olienick. “We’ve seen it all over the world … governments do bad things,” he added.
The blockade tied up traffic at the Coutts border crossing for two weeks, part of the resistance against pandemic restrictions and vaccine mandates that were seen as taking away people’s freedom to choose for themselves.
The blockade ended when convoy leader Marco Van Huigenbos announced that because of the arrests and gun seizures the blockade would wrap up immediately and peacefully.
When police convey this to Olienick in the video, he appears devastated.
“I am so heartbroken. That was never our intention,” he says. “That’s not the outcome that we wanted.” Olienick added: “I want to defend myself against some tyranny and that’s it.”
The defence has yet to present its case to Justice David Labrenz.
It’s well-known that the discovery of arms at the Coutts border crossing coincided with the beginning of serious police action against the truckers in Ottawa. They, their trucks, and hundreds of supporters were eventually removed from the streets of Ottawa after three days of pushback by hundreds of police officers.
But it is the case in a Lethbridge courthouse that may tell the whole story. Were Olienick and Carbert part of a larger plan? Were they part of a subgroup of the Freedom Convoy? Or were they acting on their own? Had they gone completely rogue as others carried out their standoff with the police? Or is it just a setup by the RCMP?
Jerry Morin and Christopher Lysak, who were arrested with Olieneck and Carbert, pleaded guilty to lesser charges in February. Morin received a sentence of three and a quarter years for conspiring to traffic firearms. Lysak was given a three-year sentence for possession of a firearm in an unauthorized place. Both jail sentences were satisfied by the time the men had served in pretrial custody.
The case hasn’t attracted much attention. Certainly not as much as the Emergency Act Inquiry or the Federal Court case. No doubt people are waiting for the jury’s verdict. A verdict that could answer a lot of questions about what those guns and ammunition were doing in that trailer.