At least one of Pat King's lawyers can't say that she does not know who I am
---------- Original message ----------
From: Natasha Calvinho <natasha.calvinho@gmail.com>
Date: Fri, 24 Jun 2022 09:11:43 -0700
Subject: Auto Response Re: Kempa said with a cloud of doubt hovering
over the country's national police force, Blair should testify under
oath. Methinks you should too N'esy Pas Marco Mendicino???
To: david.raymond.amos333@gmail.
Please note that I am in a homicide trial from June 20th to July 22nd,
2022. As a result there will be a delay in my ability to respond to
emails as quickly as normal. If your matter is urgent, please contact
my office at 613-680-0868.
Natasha J Calvinho
Tel: 613.680.0868 / Cell: 613.222.8323 / Fax: 613.691.1043
116 Lisgar St., Suite 401
Ottawa ON K2P 0C2
Calvinho Criminal Defence
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/king-billings-convoy-jail-ottawa-1.6483455
In jail for more than 100 days, Pat King 'beat down,' says supporter
Pat King, a Freedom Convoy leader, remains in jail 113 days after being arrested
Months after the Freedom Convoy was cleared out from Ottawa's streets, some of its leaders remain behind bars with no end in sight, and one expert says they're likely serving more jail time awaiting trial than they will if convicted.
Pat King, one of the leaders of the convoy, remains in jail 113 days after being arrested for his role in the protest that occupied downtown Ottawa streets for more than a month.
King is co-accused with Tyson George Billings, who was arrested on similar charges on the weekend police cleared protesters.
Often seen at King's side, Billings is known among supporters as "Freedom George" and gained notoriety during February's protests for his booming chants of "Let's go!" and "Freedom!"
Billings has been behind bars for 112 days.
The two continue to be denied bail.
Police never disclosed a full list of who was arrested and charged following the Freedom Convoy, but at least a handful of lesser-known people involved are still in jail.
According to a legal expert, King and Billings have likely already served more jail time awaiting trial than they will if convicted and sentenced.
"We are already reaching a period of prior detention that overpasses the possible punishment," said Joao Velloso, a law professor at the University of Ottawa.
Others arrested during the protest, such as Tamara Lich and Chris Barber, are awaiting trial on bail. However, they are active on social media promoting adjacent movements, including election campaigns and future protests.
King 'pretty beat down' in jail
A pastor who tries visiting regularly with King in jail at the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre questions the length of time he has been incarcerated for.
"He's pretty beat down," says Melissa McKee, a pastor at Ottawa's Capital City Bikers' Church, which offered sanctuary space during its regular hours to protesters during the Freedom Convoy.
King continues to be frustrated by the justice system — he went through a series of lawyers before hiring his current representative, Natasha Calvinho, but continues to face charges for mischief, counselling to commit mischief, counselling to commit the offence of disobeying a court order, and counselling to obstruct police.
In the midst of an April bail review hearing, King was charged with obstructing justice and perjury.
All evidence presented at the bail review remains subject to a publication ban, which is often requested and granted to prevent potential jurors from being prejudiced ahead of trial.
Supporters question justice of detainment
Supporters regularly seek out the latest info on King, and many continue to view him as a motivating figure in the Freedom Convoy, and the ongoing movement it inspired.
McKee says regardless of what people may think of him, being in jail for this long is not just.
"I'm not measuring Pat against Tamara or Chris Barber, I'm measuring what he did, what did he do? He did Facebook live videos rallying people, he knew this was a possibility that he could be arrested, but [113] days?"
McKee says she regularly ministers to people in need of what she calls "heart care" or "spiritual care."
"I'm literally doing the same thing with Pat King I would do for anybody who knocked on our door," she said, adding God has put a call on her life to help broken people.
Earlier this month, after King had spent more than 100 days in jail, a group advocating on his behalf launched a letter-writing campaign asking people to send notes of support to him at the jail.
"After over 100 days in prison being mentally worn down, Pat King is being pressured to agree to a gag order to silence his voice upon release. Send letters of support to Pat King at the address below, encouraging him to Hold The Line!" wrote David Paisley, who runs the popular social media channel "Live from the Shed."
Billings's supporters continue to solicit funds for him through online fundraising — at the end of May, a post on his Facebook page, supposedly being run by his daughter, said Billings needs repairs done to his "Freedom truck" and suggests his release is coming soon.
"Any small amount helps. Thank you all for everything you have done and continue to do for Freedom George, he thanks everyone for the cards and the support you all have given him. He loves you all so much," read part of that message.
Legal counsel for Billings did not respond to repeated requests for comment.
Most adults in jail awaiting trial, sentencing
Law expert Velloso notes about 80 per cent of the prison population is in a similar situation to King: waiting for trial on a case that will be decided within a month, or even a week, because people have already served any potential penalty that would eventually be given to them.
According to Statistics Canada, since 2004, the average number of adults awaiting trial or sentencing in provincial services is higher than the average number of adults sentenced to custody — in recent years, it's about 70 per cent higher.
In Ontario and most provinces, more than half of the people in jail are waiting to be tried or sentenced.
"For King... he's going to be in preventative detention for a while, and if you look into the overall trends of criminal punishment in Canada, he probably already served his time," Velloso said.
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https://globalnews.ca/news/8928978/privy-council-office-freedom-convoy-records-withheld/
Emergencies Act, ‘Freedom Convoy’ records withheld until days before inquiry end: PCO
Speaking during question period on
Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau defended his government’s
decision invoke the Emergencies Act as it dealt with weeks of
anti-mandate protests occupying Ottawa – May 11, 2022
Global News submitted a request under access to information laws to the Privy Council Office on Feb. 24, 2022, asking for records prepared by the department for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.
Specifically, the request sought seven days’ worth of emails and other records about discussions on the use of the Emergencies Act, and records that included the following words: “trucker convoy,” “public order emergency,” “state of emergency” or “emergency powers.”
But according to the Privy Council Office, they need an extension on processing the request and deciding whether the records can be released until Feb. 13, 2023.
That’s exactly one week before the final report from the judicial inquiry probing whether the invocation of the Emergencies Act was warranted is required to be tabled in the House of Commons.
Justice Paul S. Rouleau, an Ontario appeals court judge, is leading that inquiry.
In the letter advising Global News of the extension on the record request, the Privy Council Office said it needs up to eight months to “undertake a consultation process.”
“Should the consultations be completed in a shorter timeframe than specified, we will endeavour to respond to your request before the due date,” the office said.
In response to questions from Global News, the office said late Friday afternoon the length of the extension was not due to the inquiry underway but because of a large number of records.
The Liberals continue to face questions about their invocation of the Emergencies Act in response to the convoy that blockaded the downtown core in the nation’s capital for three weeks earlier this year.
The demonstration was deemed an illegal protest and saw a massive police operation to clear out demonstrators, as well as hundreds of criminal charges laid against those who took part.
Both police and officials from the federal and municipal governments frequently now refer to the demonstration as an “occupation” of the city.
The interim Ottawa police chief, Steve Bell, said during committee testimony in March that he would not call the demonstrators in the city either “peaceful” or “unobtrusive.”
To understand Ottawa's use of the Emergencies Act, we need to know what cabinet knew
Marco Mendicino sheds a little more light on the government's decision
Unravelling that knot is vital to understanding how the Emergencies Act came to be used to disperse the self-styled "freedom convoy." But getting that understanding might require the authority of Justice Paul Rouleau and the Public Order Emergency Commission.
"When efforts using existing authorities proved ineffective," Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino said last month during his appearance before the the special joint committee now studying the emergency declaration, "the advice we received was to invoke the Emergencies Act."
The minister referred to this advice more than once in his testimony.
"We invoked the act because it was the advice of non-partisan professional law enforcement that existing authorities were ineffective at the time to restore public safety at all of the ports of entry you mentioned," Mendicino said in response to questions from Liberal MP Rachel Bendayan.
Public Safety Minister Marco Mendicino has said the federal government
acted on advice from law enforcement. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
"There was a very strong consensus that we needed to invoke," the minister added later.
But the minister did not state who provided that advice to cabinet — and none of the committee members asked for names.
In an interview with CBC News late last week, Mendicino was more specific.
"I think it's important that we're really clear about how we took the decision and we took the decision by assessing very carefully the state of emergency that existed last winter," he said.
"And that assessment was informed by the conversations that we were having with law enforcement, including the Ottawa Police Service and the RCMP and other officials who, in their words, described these events as an 'unprecedented' act of civil disobedience … in the words of the Canadian Association of the Chiefs of Police."
The president of the CACP, Chief Bryan Larkin of the Waterloo Regional Police Service, described the events in February as "unprecedented demonstrations, protests, occupations and acts of civil disobedience" in a letter he wrote to Mendicino and Emergency Preparedness Minister Bill Blair on February 19 — five days after the emergency was declared.
The government's public account of the consultations that preceded the emergency declaration says that Blair and Mendicino met with Larkin on February 3 and 13.
Mendicino said that consultations with law enforcement in the lead-up to invoking the Emergencies Act "included conversations around precisely what powers we would be prescribing … to address the gaps and the challenges that existed as it relates to pre-existing authorities."
The government also was "consulting within our own community of public safety partners and the national security branch," he added.
RCMP and OPS say they didn't 'request' the act
The minister's references to "advice" have led to some consternation.
In her own appearance before the special committee, RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki was asked whether she had asked for the Emergencies Act to be invoked. "No, there was never a question of requesting the Emergencies Act," she replied.
Last week, while testifying before a different committee, interim Ottawa Police Service (OPS) chief Steve Bell was asked the same thing. "We didn't make a direct request for the Emergencies Act," he said.
Conservatives suggested last week that those responses contradicted Mendicino's account. Mendicino argued the question of whether law enforcement officials asked for an emergency declaration "operates from the inaccurate premise that it was for law enforcement to initiate the exercise."
"It was always the government's purview to invoke the act," Mendicino said.
If there is a material difference between asking for something and advising it, there remains the question of what exactly that advice entailed.
What police have said — and won't say
Lucki told the special committee that she couldn't "speak specifically to any advice that was done in cabinet" and the RCMP declined to comment on any advice when contacted on Friday.
The OPS also declined to provide further comment on Tuesday. But while testifying before the public safety committee in March, Bell thanked the federal government for invoking the act. He also said "the legislation provided the OPS with the ability to prevent people from participating in this unlawful protest" through powers to restrict movement, secure protected areas, target protest funding and require third parties to assist in removing trucks.
Larkin was not available for an interview but his letter of February 19 similarly expressed the CACP's support for invoking the act and said the legislation "supplements existing law enforcement tools and addresses unintended gaps in legislative authorities."
David Vigneault, director of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, told the special committee that CSIS was among the departments and agencies whose advice informed the decision to invoke the act. He said "the intelligence and advice we provide to the government is classified in order to protect our sources and methods."
Getting to transparency
Beyond questions of national security, any advice to ministers could be withheld on the grounds that it is covered by cabinet confidentiality.
As Mel Cappe and Yan Campagnolo — a former clerk of the Privy Council and a former legal adviser in the Privy Council Office, respectively — explain in a new essay, the principle of cabinet confidence exists for good reasons.
But they also argue it "should not be utilized to impede the search for the truth where the validity of government action is seriously contested and the law demands that it be reviewed, as is the case with the recent declaration of emergency in response to the trucker convoy protests and blockades."
In other words, this is just not any cabinet decision.
Police
enforced an injunction against protesters in Ottawa — some of whom had
been camped in their trucks for weeks — on Feb. 19. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)
The special committee of MPs and senators could try to demand the government disclose the substance of the advice it received. But the government might have a harder time saying no to Justice Rouleau, who will be conducting the inquiry that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was required by the Emergencies Act to call.
"As an experienced trial judge and an appellate judge, [Justice Rouleau] knows very well both the constitutional principles that inform the confidences and national security confidences and why they are there, but equally understands the need for openness and transparency," Mendicino said last week. "And the government is steadfastly committed to ensuring that there is a robust and fully transparent review of the decision to invoke the Emergencies Act …
"As he begins to make his requests for information, we will cooperate fully with him, including, as I think we all contemplate, a request for information which may be otherwise protected by cabinet confidence."
It will be hard to describe any review as robust or fully transparent if it doesn't include an account of what cabinet was being told before the Emergencies Act was invoked. And without a detailed explanation of that advice, it might be impossible for Canadians to fully understand this historic decision.
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Trudeau calls public inquiry into use of Emergencies Act during convoy protests
Official inquiry into the federal government's use of the Emergencies Act headed by Ontario judge
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau called Monday for the establishment of an inquiry into the use of the Emergencies Act.
In a news release, Trudeau said an independent public inquiry called the Public Order Emergency Commission would be created to examine the circumstances leading to the declaration being issued.
Trudeau invoked the act for the first time in Canada's history during the Freedom Convoy, giving the federal government temporary powers to deal with the blockades and protests against pandemic restrictions.
"This includes the evolution of the convoy, the impact of funding and disinformation, the economic impact, and efforts of police and other responders prior to and after the declaration," the release said.
Paul Rouleau has been named as the commissioner heading the inquiry. He was first appointed as an Ontario Superior Court justice in 2002 and then joined the Ontario Court of Appeal in 2005.
WATCH | Pubic safety minister discusses how much information his government will release
Rouleau, who has also served in the territories during his career as a litigator, will be tasked with submitting the final report, in both official languages, to both Houses of Parliament before Feb. 20, 2023.
"In the coming days and weeks, I will be working to establish the Public Order Emergency Commission and will be offering more information on the functioning of the Commission in the near future," Rouleau said in a statement. "I am committed to ensuring that the process is as open and transparent as possible, recognizing the tight timelines for reporting imposed by the Emergencies Act."
Trudeau said in a statement Rouleau would look into the circumstances that led to the Emergencies Act being invoked "and make recommendations to prevent these events from happening again."
Critics say inquiry won't scrutinize the government
Those critical of the government's decision to invoke the act described the inquiry as overly focused on the actions of protesters and the role played by fundraising and disinformation in the event.
The Conservatives argue the Liberals are using that approach to deflect attention from the government's own actions and decisions.
"The Liberal government is doing everything in their power to ensure this inquiry is unsubstantial and fails to hold them accountable," said a joint statement from Conservative MPs Raquel Dancho, Dane Lloyd and Gérard Deltell.
The Canadian Civil Liberties Association — which is suing the federal government over its decision to invoke the act — said the inquiry does not appear to be focused on government accountability.
"The broader context is important, but the government's attempts to divert attention from their own actions is concerning," said the CCLA on Twitter.
Mendicino
said the Emergencies Act was also needed to address blockades at border
crossings, such as this protest at the Ambassador Bridge linking
Ontario to Michigan. (Geoff Robins/AFP/Getty Images)
Mendicino told reporters that Rouleau "will have broad access, including to classified documents." But there do appear to be limits on the information that can be disclosed through the inquiry.
The order in council that sets out rules for the inquiry calls on the commissioner to avoid disclosing information that could be "injurious" to Canada's international relations, defence and security.
During an interview on CBC's Power & Politics, Mendicino also did not commit to waiving cabinet confidences — the discussions and deliberations between cabinet ministers that are protected by law.
Trudeau cited 'serious challenges' when invoking Emergencies Act
The Emergencies Act was revoked Feb. 23 after police successfully cleared Ottawa streets and ended adjacent protests. By law, an inquiry into the use of the act must be called within 60 days of the declaration being revoked.
Trudeau cited "serious challenges to law enforcement's ability to effectively enforce the law" when he announced its use.
"This is about keeping Canadians safe, protecting people's jobs and restoring confidence in our institutions," he said at the time.
The unprecedented use of the Emergencies Act, according to Trudeau, gave police tools to restore order in places where public assemblies were considered illegal and dangerous activities, such as blockades.
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland said at the time Canadian financial institutions could temporarily cease providing financial services in instances where there was suspicion an account was being used to further illegal blockades and occupations.
Freeland later confirmed that Ottawa directed financial institutions to freeze the accounts of people connected to the protest.
When first announced, premiers in Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Quebec expressed concern over invoking the act.
Joint committee reviewing Emergencies Act
In March, a special joint committee of seven MPs and four senators started reviewing the use of the Emergencies Act.
That committee will meet again Tuesday. It has not yet released any findings.
The Emergencies Act sets out the terms for cabinet to set up the inquiry announced Monday. It says an inquiry must be held "into the circumstances that led to the declaration being issued and the measures taken for dealing with the emergency."
Inquiries typically involve witnesses offering testimony, the review of records and the use of experts to assist parliamentarians.
WSO Statement on Emergencies Act
Ottawa (February 17, 2022): The World Sikh Organization of Canada is deeply concerned by the Government of Canada’s invocation of the Emergencies Act.
The Emergencies Act must be a measure of last resort in response to a threat to our country that cannot be dealt with under any existing laws and powers. The Government must clearly and transparently articulate why the current crisis could not have been resolved without resorting to this extreme measure. In any case, the Government must commit to lifting the emergency orders as soon as possible.
The deferential manner in which the current protests and blockades have been handled by law enforcement is in stark contrast to how previous protests by racialized minorities and other vulnerable groups have been handled in the past in Canada. The heavily armed RCMP crackdown in response to the Wet’suwet’en blockade and the dismantling of a homeless camp in Toronto are recent examples. By contrast, images of RCMP officers embracing and shaking hands with blockaders at Coutts, even after an arsenal of deadly weapons had been seized, are deeply disconcerting.
The Government must clarify why the current blockades could not have been resolved using existing laws and police powers. It appears in many instances that police have chosen not to enforce existing laws and court orders, furthering the current crisis.
Increasing police powers in response to a situation where police have refused to enforce the law with already existing powers sets a dangerous precedent. The current crisis has revealed clear inequities in the enforcement of the law that must be recognized and resolved. If the response of police to the current blockades is left unaddressed, it will lead to further distrust amongst racialized communities and vulnerable groups.
The World Sikh Organization of Canada (WSO) is a non-profit
organization with a mandate to promote and protect the interests of
Canadian Sikhs, as well as to promote and advocate for the protection of
human rights of all individuals.
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