(Ottawa) A “fishing party” and “purely speculative” foundations. Judge Paul Rouleau has denied a belated motion by a lawyer for the organizers of the “freedom convoy” to obtain the name of the owner of a truck carrying a Confederate flag during the demonstration last winter. Me Brendan Miller claims he belongs to an agent provocateur.
This agent provocateur would be Brian Fox, the president of Enterprise Canada, a public relations firm that Mr.e Miller believes she is related to the Liberal Party of Canada. He also accuses him of waving a Nazi flag so that protesters would then be portrayed as extremists in the media. He also asked the Emergency Commission to subpoena Mr. Fox.
The motion was supported by counsel for downtown Ottawa residents and businesses given the nature of these claims which “need to be confirmed or rebutted.”
“Freedom Corp. raised serious allegations about Enterprise Canada by providing little evidence,” the judge wrote in his ruling issued Wednesday morning.
The lawyer for Canada Business and Brian Fox sent a formal notice on Tuesday to Mr.e Brendan Miller to stop defaming them during the Commission hearings. He noted in passing that Mr. Fox has not been to Ottawa since 2019, that he has no ties to the Liberal Party of Canada and is instead a longtime member of the Conservative Party of Canada, and that he backed Pierre Poilievre in the party’s last leadership race.
Since Monday, the lawyer for Freedom Corp., who represents the organizers of the “freedom convoy”, has been making a lot of noise to put forward this theory. Me Miller questioned Canadian Security Intelligence Service (CSIS) Director David Vigneault about it, then Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair, without getting the answers he was looking for. He tested the judge’s patience Tuesday afternoon by using that same theory to question Public Safety Marco Mendicino.
PHOTO BY BLAIR GABLE, REUTERS
Judge Paul Rouleau
“Ask a question,” Judge Rouleau said impatiently. You are trying to make all kinds of assertions that are of no use to the Commission or to this witness. »
A few hours earlier, the judge had expelled the lawyer from the courtroom after Mr.e Miller had questioned his authority when he returned from the morning break. It was following a spat between the two men just before the break. The lawyer made an oral request to have Minister Mendicino’s press secretary, Alex Cohen, testify immediately after his boss because he was in the room. The procedure is to submit this type of request in writing to the Commission. The other parties represented then have a period of time to give their opinion before the judge decides.
Tom Marazzo, one of the protesters who testified during the third week of proceedings, was quick to discredit the Commission’s work soon after on Twitter, writing that the commissioner and prosecutors of this public inquiry ” do not respect the rules of the game” and that “the commissioner has lost control of the process and the room”. “Procedure is not more important than the TRUTH,” he concludes.
In his decision handed down Wednesday morning, Judge Rouleau explains that “as troubling as the Freedom Corp. allegations are, even if they had been supported by convincing evidence, the fact is that they would have little or no irrelevant to the key questions that the Commission must decide”.
The Rouleau Commission must determine whether the historic use of Emergency Measures Act by the federal government was justified in order to end the “freedom convoy” in Ottawa and the blockades of border crossings elsewhere in the country. It must also rule on the relevance and effectiveness of the extraordinary powers granted to the authorities under this legislation, such as the freezing of bank accounts and the power to requisition tow trucks. It will also examine whether it is necessary to modify this law which replaced the War Measures Act in 1988.
She is due to hear from Justice Minister David Lametti, Defense Minister Anita Anand and Transport Minister Omar Alghabra on Wednesday. Its public hearings will culminate with Justin Trudeau’s testimony on Friday.